Digimon Vision, an Original Story About the Digital World's Last Days
by Naztok
Summary: This goes out to my friends on the 4kids forums. I don't know why, but I used the wayback machine to see what I could of those old pages, and the nostalgia was so bitter sweet, I literally choked on it. So I write this in memory of those glory days, and as a creative vent for right now. Be specific with your critiques, and please let me know where you think the story's going.


**1. Evengemon of the Other World**

And through it, she beheld a beast with seven legs. And in its seven legs were seven eyes and seven swords. And in its seven claws was a monster, with seven pairs of wings.

And currently, the seven bullies had their prey pinned against a wall. They had chosen just the right dark alley where no one would interrupt, and the poor blonde in the ski cap would have had to face them alone had he actually been by himself.

"I'm gonna ask you this one last time, you little thief," said the leader as he gave his victim one in the gut. "Where's my phone?"

"Then I'll answer one last time," said the thief as he spit some red in his opponents face before nodding towards a strange, orange, device in the hands of one of the others. "It's right there. That's what it became. You can have it back if you want, though I doubt you'd get it to work."

This just earned him one in the face. What the other thug held in his hand was similar in size to a phone, but the chip in its corner, large lens on its back, and copious other details made it clear that it was no longer the same device that had started the fight.

"You pathetic, little, punk, it's no wonder you're all alone! What'd you think breaking everyone's gear'd prove something?! Or do you still actually think you're some kinda tech-head?! It started off sad, but now we're all sick of it, sick of you, and you just stole your last phone, Yuki!"

Whatever the group had planned for Yuki was interrupted then, because the piece of technology that had once been a phone lit up the dark alley with an eerie light. As the startled thug dropped it, a slow murmur came from the device, and as it clattered to the ground, a staticky voice followed.

"hUM-ansS... F-fEAr... Af-fraId," the crackling made the words that were already barely audible nearly impossible to make out, but that became easier as the voice rose to a high pitched yell. Meanwhile, everyone in the alley had gone completely still. "I CAn SsSSsseee yOOooouu... I caN hEAr yoUu... I cAn HEar tHe tHIng... it'S GetTIng lOudeR As yOur fEar GetS BigGer... i waNt tO Ssee it tOo... tAke it Out aNd loOk aT It... aNd taKe yOur feaR awAy... taKe it All AwaY..."

All eyes were on the screen of the device, and through the static, a figure could barely be seen. When too giant eyes pierced out of the screen, the voice rose to a shriek.

"GIVE ME YOUR FEAR!"

Yuki could not hold it in any longer as the seven opponents ran faster than they'd ever before in the other direction. As he fell to the ground, laughing, the static in the display cleared up to reveal the wide eyed grin of the orange and white creature on the screen.

"Did I overdo it?" the fuzzy creature asked in its squeaky voice.

"Not at all, Patamon," Yuki wiped a tear from his eye as well as rubbed his bruises. "But you didn't have to wait so long!"

"It's like I say," giggled Patamon. "Get 'em off balanced before you get 'em good!"

"You've never said that," but Yuki was interrupted by a less disturbing, but equally alarming noise from Patamon's little, orange, home.

"Ooh," Patamon squealed. "Company!"

And while all that was happening, the bell had just rung, signifying the end of the school day. One girl in particular was taking a few, final moments with her friends while everyone else left through the main gate. She was called Fei, and with all her friends having already wished her a happy eleventh birthday, there wasn't much else to discuss besides how to celebrate it.

"You all remember the secret password, right?" Fei asked the other girls her age.

"Of course. It's Tir na no-"

"Shh! It's a secret, remember?"

"And the domain name?" Fei went on. "You're sure you've got it?"

"When it's the same as the password, it'd be real embarrassing if we didn't."

"Sorry," Fei flushed. "My brother put a lot of work into this server. I'm sure you're gonna love it!"

"I've never seen any of his work. Is he really that good?"

"Definitely!" Fei answered. "He gets asked all the time to do stuff like this!"

After a while of walking, they'd arrived at the point where they'd split up for their respective homes.

"Remember! Four o'clock," Fei called as she waved goodbye.

"We'll see you then!" Her friends replied as they left.

Though this day was special to her, right now was the time Fei looked forward to every day after school, because after drawing her phone from her pocket and to her eye, the entire town came to life. The buildings were decorated with bright lights and always looked brand new in this fully rendered wonderland. 3d icons bounced around Fei that she recognized easily while staring through the lens of her phone, because this was the ARtwork. The Augmented Reality Network that covered the city was filled with these and other dazzling designs that she knew by heart on her way home. Therefore, she never really felt the need to ask the reason for them.

She took in the sights as usual, and remembered she couldn't delay as much as she wanted to today, but by now she could tell that something was wrong. Though she recognized the shapes around her, she lowered her phone to realize that they, and by extension herself, were not where they should be. Most people begin to panic when they're lost; Fei very quickly did so.

"U-umm," Fei's eyes rapidly darted from her phone to her surroundings. Only now was she noticing how strewn about the icons were, and the more she walked, the more fragmentation errors she noticed. In all the days of exploring the ARtwork, she'd never known anything to be out of place, and that it was today of all days things decided to go wrong made her heart beat all the quicker.

"Umm... Hello? Can someone help me?"

Anyone who might've heard her were too confused by their own phones to notice, and so she traveled further and further, desperately seeking something familiar.

"Could someone help me?"

"Please help me? I'm lost!"

"I don't know where I am!"

As if there wasn't enough strange things going on, Fei suddenly paused and stood very quiet.

"Please, someone tell me where I am?"

There it was again. She was to distracted to notice the echo before, but now she knew it was someone else's voice she heard and she quickly zeroed in on the sound. Holding her phone to her eye, she could make out what appeared to be another graphical error in the ARtwork, but this one was different somehow, because when she lowered her phone, there was a small memory card in its place. As she picked up the item, it looked exactly like the one embedded in Yuki's device, but it would be a few more seconds before she realized this.

"LOOK OUT!" The scream got Fei's attention just before the explosion happened. As she was knocked away she saw the one who had tried to warn her as he ran up to her.

"Are you okay?!" Yuki asked while Fei's ears were still ringing.

"Ugh," Was Fei's response before another explosion went off farther away.

Yuki spun around to face the noise and drew his device from earlier to his eye. Fei thought to do the same with her phone only to realize she'd lost it in the first explosion.

"She's not answering. She's never been this late before."

One boy sat alone at his desk staring at his phone, but as he said this, he removed his glasses before lowering a visor from his brow to his eyes and was suddenly together with Fei's friends in a virtual, fairy-tale, land. Each of them had their own virtual reality visors, and had used them nearly an hour ago to join this server, so that despite the wonderland around them, by now they were feeling very bored.

"Why's she taking so long?"

"I thought she said you made this just for today? Why isn't she here?"

Fei's brother was glad his avatar didn't sweat the way he was right now.

"H-how about a tour of the castle?! There's some medieval Irish architecture I mixed in with a touch of 12th century Scandinavian!"

"Isn't it all a bit childish?"

After an eternity of the girls staring at him, he spoke up once more.

"You know what? I'd better go look for her! Y'all hang on, we'll be right back!"

He made sure his microphone was off before muttering, "Friggin' middle-schoolers!" And by then, there was no one left in the server.

"Are you crazy?! You could've killed me!" Shouted a floating, blue, and very upset creature that the thing in Yuki's hand had identified as Thunderballmon X.

"After the giant mess you made?!" Patamon retorted. As two pairs of wings carried it through the air, it was apparent that there was more than one Digimon present with the X-Antibody. "I'm sorry if you took it personally!"

"Thunderballmon!" Yuki shouted. "Tell me right now! Do you know anyone named Illumina?! Answer me, and I'll let you go!"

"Let me go?! Then you're the one who trapped me here!" Thunderballmon shouted while wasting no time pitching another ball of electricity towards Patamon. Yuki's partner dodged it, but as the attack found a mark, the power surge overloaded any machines in the real world, causing more chaos.

Fei couldn't help but scream from the sound of the explosions, and Yuki gave her a quick glance before turning to Patamon.

"You know what you have to do," said Yuki.

"Whenever you're ready," Patamon replied.

As Yuki held his device towards his partner, he traced across the screen towards Patamon, who started to glow.

"Data: Release!"

"Program: Respond!"

"Patamon digivolve to-" As the glowing form of Patamon took a humanoid form, several shocks erupted across the digital figure causing data leaks as it collapsed to the ground, but as more information was fed into him, the new Digimon stood up as it's wounds were covered with cybernetic armor. As a jet pack covered the torn angel wings, a visor shielded its scarred face, and to finish it off, wires from its chest connected to emitters on its wrists where a pair of beam swords erupted from.

"Evengemon!" Declared the new being.

"Is that supposed to scare me?!"

Thunderballmon vanished in a flash only to appear behind Evengemon and launch another attack. The cybernetic angel responded by holding its arm back and deflecting the electricity with its wrist blade. As the expressionless visor turned to look at its opponent, the frustration in the round creature fueled its anger.

"This is a fun game," said Evengemon. "How about you start playing nice?"

Thunderballmon's glare darted from Evengemon to the rest of the battlefield. As Yuki stood by a wall of already ruined monitors, Fei was huddled under a light post that was still flowing with energy.

"How about no!" Thunderballmon held up its hands and a current of electricity flowed into its palms. "Thunder Bomber!"

As the attack fired, Yuki's eyes grew wide as he traced its trajectory.

"Evengemon!" he shouted as something deep within him told him to shield Fei.

Understanding immediately, the thrusters on Evengemon's back fired, placing itself directly between Thunderballmon's attack and its target, and from her position, Fei managed to see it all through the thing it Yuki's hand. The blast struck Evengemon squarely in its chest armor, sending current throughout its cybernetics. Thunderballmon smirked as it looked on, but it's expression quickly changed as the energy was channeled towards the emitters on Evengemon's wrists.

"Wrong answer," Evengemon's thrusters propelled it towards Thunderballmon with its blades doubled in size.

"Gigadrive Glaive!" As it brought down its swords on Thunderballmon's face, the cornered creature focused all its power into an electric barrier between the two, locking them in a stalemate.

"Now you've got him off-balance!" Yuki shouted, "Reverse the polarity!" And once it did, the like currents propelled Thunderballmon like a bullet.

Thunderballmon's expression was nothing but shocked, but after a short while of flying, it struck an invisible barrier. Suddenly it's face contorted in agony as the momentum kept it trapped against the unseen energy field. All Thunderballmon could do was scream as it disappeared in a flurry of zeroes and ones.

"Guess we got 'im good?" Evengemon said after a long silence. Its visor could not relay the confusion the fight's sudden end created. As Evengemon looked on in surprise, Yuki helped Fei get to her feet.

"You alright?" But before Fei could say anything, someone else did.

"FEI!"

As all heads turned towards the black haired, nineteen year-old running towards them, Fei's eyes brightened up.

"Nohda!" she called.

Not wasting any time, Yuki held up his hand once more and as a surge of data left Evengemon and entered the device, he and the now reverted Patamon took off down an alley before Fei's brother could reach her.

"Are you alright?! Where were you?! Who was that kid?!" As Nohda bombarded his sister with questions she could not keep up with the answers.

"I was just-"

"Never mind. We're going home!" And with a pat on the back Nohda had Fei on her way. As he watched her walk dazedly down the street, Nohda stopped and reached behind a nearby dumpster. From there he drew a piece of technology similar in appearance to the one in Yuki's device and in Fei's pocket, but unlike those, this one was completely burnt out.

**2. Glitmon the Great Destroyer**

Created as a by-product of information telegraphing, the ARtwork originally gained popularity purely for aesthetic reasons. It took very little time for people to find uses for this new world though, as businesses quickly signed contracts to have their mascots placed within the ARtwork so that no matter what you were looking for, there was a friendly face to help you find it. Thanks to the nearly overnight success of the ARtwork, the company responsible, Shinkiro, was one of the most hiring in the world.

"You going on break yet?"

"Not yet. I just need to finish this last line of code."

As one man leaned on the wall of a cubicle the other was typing away at his keyboard.

"Where're you going this time?" asked the first employee. "Hawaii? Tahiti?"

"I was thinking maybe the Argentina simulation," said the other as he saved his work. With his computer in sleep mode, he opened a drawer in his desk to draw out a visor. "I hear their beaches are worth a look too."

"Good choice," the coworker waved goodbye with his thumb and index finger touching. "Have a good vacation."

Alone in his cubicle, the man placed the visor over his head as he leaned back in his chair. With the program running, it was now a hammock as far as he could tell, and as the wind blew lightly over the golden sand, the tide slowly washed along the shore. A drink on his desk that was suddenly a giant tortoise shell provided the finishing touches of this man's complete contentment.

"Nice ocean."

Sitting up at the sudden voice the man looked all throughout the scenery to find where it could have come from.

"It'sss no Net Ocean, but I'll take what I can get thesssse dayssssss."

As the waves against the shore rapidly grew in ferocity, the Shinkiro employee stood just in time to see something massive emerge from the waters. The giant orange and blue serpent lunged towards the man with its jaw wide open, and whether or not the man could have told that this Seadramon had the X-Antibody would have done nothing to alter the fear that knocked him back from his chair.

"Hastings!" the man shouted as he got up from where he fell, and as the coworker from earlier returned to the cubicle, he was shown the visor that had cracked from the fall. "Did you hack my visor?! What kinda sick joke are you trying to make?!"

"What are you on about?" he said with a raised eyebrow, but an alarm from the computer interrupted them before any fighting could begin.

Ten years ago, before the ARtwork became widely available, one city already featured it, and was affected by it in ways no one could have imagined. In one house particularly, a child with black hair had his hands tightly gripping a purple toy because his ears were already gripped by the shouting between his parents.

"Don't you dare!" shouted the father. "Don't you dare walk out that door!"

"You think I can bear another day like this?!" the mother screamed back. "First that boy, and now Fei?! Everyone's asking questions, and it's all because of him!"

The child's eyes grew wide as his mother stabbed her finger toward him. As the tears began to well in his eyes, his father stepped between them.

"And what do you think leaving will prove?! That we've got nothing to hide?! They're not gonna stop saying things once you're gone!"

"Maybe," she said quietly as she opened the front door. "But I won't be here to hear it anymore."

Suddenly, their son ran to his mother and held on to her with all his might.

"Mom, please!" he cried. "I'm sorry about Endoh! I'm sorry about Fei! I didn't want any of this to happen! But please don't go! I don't want to lose anyone else!"

A slap to the face immediately silenced the boy. As he staggered backward, his mother only glared at him.

"Don't be stupid, Nohda."

His father was right, of course. The rumors only got worse once his mother left, and for Nohda, going to school became more a nightmare than ever.

"Hey it's that creepy kid! All alone again!"

"Endoh was the only one who could stand you! What'd you make him disappear for?!"

"Not just that! Now I hear his sister and mom are gone too!"

"That's so scary."

When Nohda could stand it no longer he gave his classmates a look more hateful than the one his own mother had given him when she left.

"Keep talking like that," he said. "And I'll make you disappear too."

In a dark room, in the modern day, Nohda lifted his head from his arms, having fallen asleep at his desk again. As the light from his monitor put spots in his eyes, he saw the notification that had brought his computer out of sleep mode, and that notification was a message.

LordoftheErth97 - what do you know about AI?

Nohda yawned as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He gave his fingers a stretch before typing out his response.

Odin's_Horse - That depends. I can alter an NPC's character matrix or build one from scratch. Then there's a matter of what game engine your looking at. I can send you the link to my commission page for a list of prices if you'd like.

Nohda hit "send" and leaned back in his chair awaiting a response. Just as Fei had told her friends, Nohda was frequently asked to fulfill programming requests for people online, so this was all routine to him, or it would have been until he got the reply.

LordoftheErth97 - I mean an AI for the ARtwork. I hear they're the new big thing.

With a raised eyebrow, Nohda typed out a response.

Odin's_Horse - they've been a big thing since the ARtwork started, but you need a license to alter it.

LordoftheErth97 - then who's more likely to be slipping monsters into the ARtwork then the best hacker not hired by Shinkiro?

His heartbeat picked up before he checked his interrogators profile, and when Nohda saw that the listed age of the one questioning him was ten, his mind immediately went to the boy he saw with his sister yesterday.

Odin's_Horse - So then, what now? An investigator from Shinkiro could simply go through my post history to find that I haven't anything to do with any "monsters", but what do I have to prove to you?

LordoftheErth97 - just tell me everything you know about the Digimon

In the same apartment, just in another room, Fei sat on her bed staring at the chip she'd found before her encounter with Yuki. With no phone, she could not look or listen to it like she had before, and the guilt of wasting her brother's birthday present would not allow her to ask for his help.

"You're in there aren't you?" Fei muttered. "You asked me for help, but I wasn't much use at all."

It took her no time to remember who had given all the help, and that's who she thought about as she stepped onto her apartment's balcony. From there she could see the whole town, and the first thing which always grabber her attention was the Shinkiro building and the giant, stylized, eye that was the company logo. Today, though, a second thing grabber her attention on the roof of a much smaller building. Outlined against the horizon stood, of all people, exactly the boy she was thinking of. With great speed, Fei flew from her room, and immediately tripped over the thing outside it. Rubbing a bump on her forehead, she eyed the crumpled box that had sent her into the wall. Her curiosity piqued for a moment, she opened the package to find a purple toy inside. It had three buttons next to a digital screen and a keychain that Fei hooked to her side, and next to that was a letter that Fei hastily shoved in the same pocket as the chip she found. With that few second delay over, she took off once more to find Yuki.

"Data: Release!"

"Program: Respond!"

"Patamon digivolve to-" From atop the building, Yuki's four-winged friend began to glow, when suddenly, a massive serpent lunged outwards and caught the light in its gaping jaws. As Yuki looked on in shock, Seadramon seemed stunned as it began to bear its teeth. As its jaw grew wider, Yuki saw what was forcing the creature to look so agape. Light shone from the creatures mouth as its meal quickly grew in size. As the Seadramon gagged and shuddered, the newly evolved monster took a swipe with its blades and took out a few teeth as well as the tip of its predators tongue. Finally free, Yuki's partner returned to his side.

"Holy crash! That was the worst thing ever!" The cyber angel shivered intensely as it tried desperately to feel clean. "Like, by far! The worst thing ever!"

"Why didn't you take him out!" Yuki shouted. "Just one jab through the skull and this'd be over!"

"Oh good! I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm Eaten!" Evengemon screamed.

The two glared at each other while Seadramon writhed in pain. But suddenly, a thought appeared within that expressionless visor.

"Oh, almost forgot!" Evengemon said before striking a dynamic pose. "Evengemon!" The monster proclaimed which prompted Yuki to place his hand over his face.

"You!" A voice shouted. Yuki looked up confusedly expecting Seadramon to sound like a pre-teen girl. But when he found the real source of the voice, it was just making it to the top of the fire escape.

"You?!" Yuki mimicked Fei in surprise, but Seadramon chose that moment to recover.

"Ish Shpear!" the monster managed to shout before spitting a stream of absolute zero. Evengemon deflected the attack with his right blade, but when the particles in his energy sword reached zero degrees any kinetic energy needed to keep the beam going vanished.

"You seriously wanna keep fighting?! Why don't you just clean up the mess you've made and leave?!" Evengemon shouted.

"I'm noth gonna be beathen now!" Seadramon hissed. "Noth now that I've made a new home!"

"What's going on?" Fei asked as she ran towards Yuki on the other edge of the building. "Are we in trouble again?"

"We're fine!" Yuki said as he turned towards her. "At least, I think we're fine. It's Evengemon who I'm worried about."

"Evengemon?" Fei repeated confusedly. Yuki held his device to Fei's eyes so that she could see two Digimon face off again, but it was when she saw the rest of the ARtwork that her jaw dropped. Over the edge of the building until the horizon, the entire town was covered in water.

"D-did," Fei stuttered, "Did you do that?"

"What?!" Yuki looked extremely offended. "No! It was that thing!" He said while pointing in Seadramon's general direction. "I just barely made it up here before Patamon drowned!"

"Patamon?" Fei's brow grew more and more furrowed.

"Never mind!" Yuki shouted before turning his attention back to the battle.

Evengemon flew towards Seadramon with his remaining blade, but before it could get close enough, Seadramon had already submerged. Yuki stood as close to the edge of the building as he dared while he desperately scanned the water with his device.

"Behind you!" Yuki shouted, and Evengemon spun around just in time to lose his last sword to the cold attack.

"Fly up in the air, Patamon!" Fei yelled.

"Evengemon!" Yuki retorted. "And he can't! He can't move far away from my D-Vice!"

"D-Vice?" Fei repeated Yuki once again, but as she stared at the piece of machinery, her hand moved towards the memory chip in her pocket. Drawing it out to compare caused the note from her brother to fall to ground, and it was then that she kneeled to read it.

Dear Fei,

I'm sorry things didn't work out on your birthday. I want you to know that even though I don't always spend time with you, I always look forward to whenever I get to. I promise I'll make a new simulation for you, but even so, I want you to have this. It's my virtual pet that I've had since before you were born. I know it's not much, but I hope it'll be a reminder of the day we met.

Your favorite brother,  
Nohda

Holding the note and card in one hand, Fei reached for the purple toy with her other, and as she brought them close to each other, a brilliant light enveloped her hands. An invisible force took hold of the chip and virtual pet, and when they made contact, the surface of the toy gave way like it was liquid. The memory card embedded itself as changes happened throughout the toy, but outwardly, it's shape became semicircular as a camera lens appeared on its back. Now it had the exact appearance as the one Yuki held despite being purple instead of orange. As Fei held up the new D-Vice, she saw through it the exact same graphical error from before, but as an energy connected it with Fei, the glitch began to take solid form. The first thing Fei saw was the eye. It was large and unblinking, but below it were another pair and the creature's actual face. Behind that was the rest of it with its stubby limbs curled like a fetus, and a long tail with a bulb on its end that blinked every few seconds.

"Who are you?" The thing asked.

"Who- what?" Fei stammered.

"You don't know either?" As it grew very close to Fei, it's face filled the screen of her D-Vice. "Don't worry! We can find out who we are together!"

A roar and a shout brought the attention back to the battle. As the new monster watched Evengemon tiredly dodge Seadramon's attacks, instincts drove it into the fray, and as she watched it fly at the massive sea serpent, a sudden connection in Fei's heart drove her to yell after it.

"Glitmon!"

The scream caught Seadramon's attention just in time to make eye contact with the one in Glitmon's forehead.

"Astigmagic!" The new Digimon declared before dazzling Seadramon's retinas with a flash of light. The monsters pupils shrank as it flailed backwards, roaring, and blindly firing off bursts of ice into the air. In its panic, Seadramon's tail rose from the waters, and before Glitmon could react, it was knocked far away to land with a tiny splash.

"Glitmon!" Fei cried out.

"Now! Evengemon!" Yuki shouted just as loudly. With one last burst, Evengemon flew at Seadramon, dodging any ice until it was directly behind the creature's head. Then, taking the cords of his energy blades, Evengemon threw them forwards just in time for Seadramon to bite down and receive a terrible shock. Like a bridle for a horse, Evengemon tugged at Seadramon's neck as the power coursing the cables burned through its jaws.

"Ish Sh-shpear!" Seadramon gagged desperately, but no stream left its mouth as the little ice it could manage only coated the cords. Seadramon roared as the burning only grew worse as a response.

"Why? It shtopoed your beamsh!"

"At absolute zero, particles can't move! But at the same degrees, there's no resistance for electricity to flow!" Yuki explained. "Now Seadramon, do you give up yet?!" The agonized expression the creature gave back was answer enough. "Alright, Evengemon, let him go!"

"Don't you think I've been trying!"  
As Seadramon madly flailed about, the most Evengemon could manage was to keep it from submerging. As much as it wanted to let go, the powerful current was already tensing up all of Seadramon's facial muscles, so that it could do nothing but chomp down on its own doom.

After several, agonizingly long, seconds, Seadramon finally let go as its dissipating body no longer had the form to grip anything. But as the last of Seadramon's zeroes and ones vanished, the water flooding the ARtwork remained. As Yuki looked over the edge of the building, he saw Fei already at the bottom searching for her friend. Waving her D-Vice about wildly, she finally spun around to see Glitmon's face filling the screen. When it opened its mouth to speak, little bubbles floated away.

"I found out I'm not a fighter."

**3. Patamon Wanted His Name In a Title**

"Hemimetabolism. This is the process where insects reach maturity without the pupal stage. Also known as Incomplete Metamorphosis, this excludes some well known species like butterflies and ants, but does include species such as grasshoppers and praying mantises."

The lights were off in the classroom as the young teacher flipped through her slide show. The various insect pictures left little impression on the class as most found the darkness as an invitation to sleep.

"The immature stage of these species is know as the nymph, except for cases where the insect spends a period of its life under water, in which case that stage is called a naiad," the teacher went on and on while the only boy in the class to wear a headband stared out the window. "Unlike the larva stage of other insects, the nymph and naiad stage both already largely resemble their adult stage."

Tired of the current view, the boy from earlier gave into the temptation to pull something from his pocket, and through the lens in its back, he stared out the window at all the chaos. From his desk in the classroom the ARtwork gave the boy the impression of being in a kind of deranged aquarium, as just outside the window, random mascots and icons were tossed about by a flood of water. With a grin, he explored the underwater world and while taking in this Atlantean version of his town, something interesting caused him to unthinkingly speak up.

"What about wasps?"

The teacher paused mid-sentence to identify the speaker, and when he realized he'd spoken out loud, the boy turned to the front of the room with an embarrassed expression.

"Yes, Daichi?" the teacher asked. "Did you have a question?"

"Ah, no ma'am."

"Wasps don't live in the water, they die when they're wet!" a random student piped up.

"No, that's bees!"

"Wrong, bees only die when they sting people!"

"Class," the teacher sighed. "It seems I still have a lot to teach. Daichi, what's that in your hand?"

"N-nothing, teacher!" Daichi yelled as he fumbled to hide the green D-Vise.

"You know what the rules are about phones in class," the teacher said with her hand outstretched.

"But it's not a phone!" Daichi blurted before mumbling. "Not anymore atleast."

"I don't care what it is. If it's a distraction, it's getting confiscated. Tell your parents to see me after class if you want it back."

"No way!" Daichi held on to the thing with a death grip. As he slowly trudged to the teacher's desk, a student behind him leaned over to whisper into the neighboring girl's ear.

"Hey, Tenchi, do you think a pupal stage would help your brother reach maturity?"

The girl sighed as her brother returned to the desk in front of her.

"Seriously?" Tenchi muttered to her brother. "This is why you can't have nice things."

"Shut up," Daichi hissed back. "I know who we can ask for help."

Fei had sat atop the roof of that building for longer than she could tell. Several failed conversation attempts passed between her and Yuki while Patamon managed to make just as much progress with Glitmon.

"So how long've you been in the ARtwork?" Patamon asked.

"I dunno," Glitmon responded.

"Well, what d'ya remember about the Digital World?"

"Nothing."

Finally giving up, Patamon fluttered back to Yuki who had a pair of goggles pulled over his eyes as he sat hunched over something.

"Hey, Yuki!" Patamon whined. "Can we go now?"

"Is the water gone yet?" Yuki replied.

To find out, Fei took her new, purple, D-Vise, and held it over the building to confirm that Seadramon's flood was still in place.

"Should we try and do something about that?" Fei asked.

"It's the adults' job to fix the ARtwork," Yuki replied without even turning his head.

"But you're always fighting those monsters."

"Digimon. And I do it 'cuz I'm looking for someone."

"Illumina?" Fei repeated the name she heard Yuki mention during their first encounter. "It sounds familiar. Who is she?"

"Look, your Digimon can survive underwater!" Yuki snapped. "Why don't you just go home?!"

"Because I've still got questions."

"Well, I'm not answering them!"

"What're you working on?" Fei suddenly appearing over his shoulder gave Yuki a shock. "Is... Is that my phone?!"

"No," Yuki muttered after just long enough of a pause.

"What're you doing to it?!" Fei screamed.

"He does this sorta stuff all the time," Patamon interjected. "Yuki here's what you might call a Hack."

"Hacker!" Yuki snapped.

"You shoulda seen when he first found me. I've never been so many different colors. Hey, Yuki, do that thing where you make my voice sound all deep."

"So," Fei tried to make sense of Patamon's words. "He tinkers with phones? And they still work afterwards?"

"Oh not at all!" Patamon blurted. "He breaks like all of them."

"Give me that!" Fei snatched the phone right out of Yuki's hand and pressed all over it for far less than the best results. "Maybe my brother can fix it." A sudden thought caused her to look back at Yuki. "Hey, where do you live?"

"N-" Yuki stammered. "Nowhere."

"I just thought, until they finish cleaning the ARtwork, you can stay with us," Fei pointed over the side of the building towards the apartments from where she spotted Yuki. "There's no way the water got into our building's wifi. And even if it did, we should be way above the water level."

"Sounds perfect!"

"'Cept, how do we get there?" Yuki asked. "Remember Thunderballmon? If you fly to far from the D-Vise, that same barrier'll get you!"

"What if," Fei waved her hands about as she explained. "What if I stood on the balcony, and you tossed your D-vise at me?"

"Tell me you're joking!" Yuki jeered while Patamon turned pale.

Fei turned her gaze down from her apartment window, and when it reached the ground, another idea appeared in her head.

"How far can Patamon get from your D-Vise?"

"About a meter less than he needs to," Yuki shrugged which placed the biggest smile on Fei's face.

"You know," she went on. "I'm more than a meter tall." The look Yuki gave her perfectly conveyed his dread.

Patamon's eyes were closed as it backstroked across the water's surface. Its content expression contrasted perfectly with Yuki's while he trudged along the sidewalk getting many strange looks.

"I hate you," he muttered before getting Fei's knee to his cheek.

"You'd have rather stayed on that roof all day?" Fei aimed her question at the top of Yuki's head while she held his D-Vise high in the air.

"YES!" Yuki shouted before nearly toppling over and dropping Fei from his shoulders.

"We can go back if you want, but we're already almost to my apartment."

"Already?!" Yuki poured as much sarcasm as he could muster into the single word.

"Already?" Patamon moaned. "I was having a good time." Meanwhile, Glitmon attempted to mimic Patamon's motions in the water beneath it.

"Don't be mad," Fei said as she dropped down from Yuki's shoulders and returned his D-Vise. "I bet you're hungry. I know I am after spending the whole day on that roof."

While Yuki watched her climb a flight of stairs, he tried to feel better by remembering when she wasn't in such high spirits. Checking the ARtwork, what he saw was a wall of water that stopped short of the apartment complex.

"Atleast you were right about the Wifi," Yuki muttered as Patamon's leisurely swim got cut short when he reached the edge.

"I'm home," Fei chimed as she opened the door to her living room and made a b-line to her brother's door. After flooding the room with light from the outside, she ran up to grab the back of his chair. "Nohda! Thank you so much for the birthday present!"

"The- the virtual pet?" Nohda stammered after minimizing his browser.

"Yeah, it's the best present I've ever gotten!"

"That's great!" Nohda said as Fei's joy spread to him. "You should've told me you-" But when Yuki stepped into view, Nohda's expression changed to shocked. "You?!"

Fei looked confusedly at Yuki while Nohda sent similar looks between him and the chat window that was still getting updates.

"Oh right. This is my new friend, Yuki."

"And I'm, Glitmo-" but Fei shoved her hands in her pocket to muffle the sound.

"You," Nohda repeated while turning to face his sister. "You should've said you were having friends over! I'd've baked some brownies!"

"We're not really friends," Yuki muttered.

"Eh?" Nohda said with his face suddenly centimeters from Yuki's. "Then just what are you?"

"Nothing, mister!" Yuki squeaked.

"Mister? I'm only nineteen!"

"Some brownies would be great!" Fei interrupted. "We'll be in my room." She said as she hurriedly pushed Yuki down the hall.

"Your room?!" yelled Yuki and Nohda simultaneously as the door closed between them.

Yuki wasn't quite sure what to expect as Fei pulled on his arm. As she opened the door and flipped the lights on, he wondered if what he'd imagined was more or less strange than what he saw. The room was, for all intents and purposes, perfectly normal. On the one wall there was a bed, on the other was a closet and shelves, and opposite from the door was the balcony window from which Yuki could see most of the city. But the first thing before all of that that Yuki noticed was all of the pictures. Every flat surface that wasn't a floor was covered in picture frames of various shapes and sizes, and all of them held a photo of Fei in a group of others her age.

"Is this supposed to be normal?" Yuki asked as Fei fell onto her bed.

"Huh? Sure, I guess. I take photos with all my friends."

Yuki glanced over each picture as he walked around the room, noticing that very few had the same person with Fei twice.

"Who's this?" Yuki held a random frame which Fei squinted at.

"Umm,"she replied as she searched her brain for a name. "I actually don't remember."

"When was the last time you saw them?" Yuki asked, but gave up when Fei's eyes became distant.

Sorting through the mess, Yuki finally found one which stood out by apparently not showing Fei. The picture in question shown a man and a woman together, both of them kneeling by a young boy with black hair and glasses.

"And who's this supposed to be?" Yuki asked, and was surprised when Fei answered immediately.

"That's Nohda with my mom and dad."

"Then this must be," Yuki went on as he examined the thing in Nohda's arms. The small baby had its eyes closed while it slept wrapped in a blanket. "Is this you? You had black hair when you were younger?"

"I guess so, but that was before my mom left. What're your parents like?"

"Is it okay to talk now?" Fei quickly pulled her D-Vise from her pocket to see Glitmon floating about the room.

"Yeah, what was that about?" Yuki asked. "You're fine with your brother meeting me, but not your Digimon?"

"I just thought," Fei met the gazes of the five eyes looking at her. "I mean I never heard Patamon talking around other people. I thought you wanted to keep it a secret."

Yuki gave her a confused look before something dawned on him.

"Oh that," Yuki remembered. "Actually, Patamon's just really shy around new people."

Patamon, who'd been rolling on the floor like a cat, froze and blushed when everyone in the room stared at him. As he met their gaze, the smuggest grin appeared on his face.

"Liar," Glitmon said, before they all started laughing.

"Fei?" Nohda's voice brought the group back to reality as he appeared outside the room.

"Nohda,"Fei replied. "I want you to meet, Glitmo-"

"Actually, I'm going out right now," Nohda interrupted her. "I'll be back before dinner, but could you keep an eye and make sure nothing burns?"

"Fei can keep me," Glitmon said as Nohda was already leaving.

"Is he always like that?" Yuki asked Fei.

"Like what?"

"So," Yuki looked for the nicest word he could think of. "So nervous?"

"Well, he's been a bit jumpy since yesterday," Fei replied as she got up to leave the room. "You'll stay for dinner right? I wonder what Nohda's making."

"Am I hungry?" Glitmon asked.

While Fei made her way to the kitchen, but rather than following, Yuki quietly returned to her brother's room.

"Uh, Yuki?" Patamon hovered behind his partner. "The food's that way."

"Look at this, Patamon," Yuki said as he examined the hardware Nohda had collected. "With this much stuff, I'd have no trouble finding Illumina."

"You can't seriously be thinking what I think you're thinking!" Patamon hissed while Yuki lifted a hard drive from a shelf. When the lights suddenly flipped on, Yuki nearly knocked over an entire shelf of the stuff as he turned to see Fei panting in the doorway.

"I wasn't!" Yuki shouted, but was cut short when she yelled back.

"Is it happening here too?!" She cried.

"What?!" Yuki and Patamon both asked as Fei flew to one of her brother's monitors.

"I was in the kitchen and nothing worked!" Fei looked ready to panic. "I don't know what Nohda'll do if something happened to his computers!"

"Let's hope nothing does!" Patamon glared at Yuki as he carefully replaced the hard drive.

With the display on, Fei's heart sunk when it showed her the jumbled mess that nowhere at all resembled something functional.

"What's going on?!" Fei said while Yuki and Patamon gathered around her. When the fourth member of their group failed to join them, Patamon looked towards Glitmon who was hovering by the window.

"Hey!" Patamon hissed. "Get over here and panic with us!"

"But there's a thing over there."

Completely unaware of the situation at home, Nohda checked the map on his phone to be sure he was heading in the right direction. He had seen that the given address was for a school, but the last message he'd received was enough to draw him in.

LordoftheErth97 - it's time we met in person. All will be revealed

After a long discussion online, Nohda was ready to meet who ever it was who'd thought to ask him about "digital monsters". With children flooding out the school's front door at this hour, Nohda was the only person to be going the opposite direction, and as his foot steps echoed through the hallway, he checked the number of every door he passed. Eventually he did find the number that he was given, but this door stood out from the rest by also having someone standing by it. The girl gave Nohda a distant look as his foot steps slowed. After staring awkwardly at each other for a few moments, she was the first to speak up.

"Odin's horse?" Tenchi asked quietly.

"Yes?" Nohda replied.

"He's inside," she went on. "Say you're our uncle or something."

"And hurry up!" Nohda was surprised by a sharp voice coming from the girls pocket. "We've got places to be!"

"Umm, okay?" was the best response Nohda could manage before sliding the door to the classroom open. He immediately froze when he met the gaze of the people inside. The teacher and a student who shared more than a passing resemblance to the girl outside both seemed surprised by Nohda's arrival.

"So," Nohda struggled to come up with something to say. "What's all this about?"

"Mr. Suzuki?" the teacher asked.

"Excuse me?" Nohda stammered as he walked further into the room.

"I'm sorry," the teacher apologized. "I always thought Jira Suzuki would look a bit older."

"Ah yes!" Nohda managed to force a smile as he pushed his hair back. "Actually, I'm his nephew, Endoh Suzuki!" Nohda lied. "Is my cousin-"

"Daichi," the boy muttered quickly.

"My cousin Daichi!" Nohda began to talk quicker as he grew more nervous. "Has he been causing trouble in class?!"

"I have and I'm very sorry," Daichi droned. "Can I have my thing back, now?"

"Yes, I found him playing with this during class," she said as she held out the green D-Vise. Upon seeing it, Nohda's eyes grew wide before he grabbed the thing right from the teacher's hand. "Excuse me?" she sounded shocked.

"Oh yes," Nohda said, suddenly sounding very confident as he examined the thing in his hand. "Well, you know what kids are like these days. All the information in the world available online, so they don't bother to keep any of it in their heads."

"Eh, exactly," the teacher stammered. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm really needed here."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Nohda went on, still paying more attention to the D-Vise than what was leaving his mouth. "Your knowledge will be greatly appreciated once this self-serving society fed entirely on instant gratification finally devours itself."

Without any idea of how to reply, the teacher blushed when Nohda finally made eye contact with her.

"Well, I'm sure you'll make sure Daichi behaves himself from now on," she said as she tried to compose herself. "Thank you for coming in, mister Endoh?"

"Any time," Nohda made straight for the door after shaking the teacher's hand. As he was still holding the D-Vise, Daichi was quick to chase after him.

"What the heck was that?!" Daichi asked once his sister had joined them. "And give me that already!"

Daichi jumped as high as he could, but Nohda held the D-Vise just a bit higher.

"A deal's a deal," Nohda said. "First you're going to tell me what's going on."

A sudden growl from the thing in his hand startled Nohda enough to drop it, and Daichi quickly dove to catch the D-Vise before it hit the ground.

"Later, mister!" the voice from earlier yelled from Tenchi's pocket. "Right now, we're all in big trouble!"

Nohda shook his head as he ran fingers through his hair. "I swear, from those messages, I expected someone a bit more eloquent."

"That was me who wrote those," muttered Daichi's sister who blushed when Nohda looked at her.

"Daichi," Nohda said as he aimed a finger at the boy. When he aimed it at the girl she looked away.

"That's Tenchi!" Daichi said. "And these are our Digi-"

"It just had to be the adopted children of Shinkiro's CEO, didn't it?" Nohda thought out loud which instantly silenced the rest of them.

"Okay, mister Endoh, how did you know we're adopted?!" Daichi muttered.

"Because I knew the real Endoh Suzuki."

**4. Coredramon With Wing and Claw**

Yuki, Fei, Patamon, and Glitmon stared at the Shinkiro building from the balcony, unaware that they were mimicking Nohda, Daichi, and Tenchi who had climbed to the school's roof. As they watched the ARtwork, ripples appeared in the water preceding the emergence of a glowing, gold, entity. The creature's red, compact eyes made a passing glance to the group on the school as it buzzed upwards towards the core of the ARtwork to join many others of its kind. There, it aimed its abdomen towards a bronze structure, and from a nozzle at its tip, sprayed a luminous substance which formed a portion of the growing mass.

"Waspmon! I knew I saw something during class!" Daichi smirked.

"I'd be worried for anyone who managed to miss that!" came the harsh voice from Tenchi's pocket, followed by a snarl from Daichi's.

"What are they doing, anyway?" Tenchi muttered.

"Building a hive, obviously!" Daichi declared.

Nohda stroked his hair as he used his phone to look into the ARtwork. "It looks like they're using the water as adhesive for their nest," he said. "But they'd need more material than that to form something that solid."

"They're sucking out data through the ARtwork!" Fei cried. "We've gotta stop them!"

As she looked towards Yuki, she saw something in his eyes. The swarm of insectoids clouded the air around the Shinkiro building, and his constant failure to count them all filled him with fear.

"C'mon!" Patamon yelled. "We've taken on more than that before! Or at least somewhere near that number, and definitely not all at once, but we've got this!"

"Can I get it too?" Glitmon asked.

"Absolutely!" He patted Glitmon on the head. "You take that one, and I'll get the rest!"

Just as Patamon was pointing, the Waspmon he indicated turned its ruby eyes towards the group. Suddenly, the thing was flying straight towards the four of them causing Patamon to hide behind Glitmon who only stared at it.

"Look out!" Fei yelled, but the creature made no sudden movements up to the point where it hovered centimeters from Gltimon's eye. Spending only a few moments to watch the group, it then went back to its original business.

"Just drones," Yuki muttered. When the group turned their attention to him, the boy released a massive sigh. "They're just drones! Brainless workers! If we leave them alone, they won't bother us!"

"Won't bug us, you mean," Patamon interjected.

"But we have to stop them from taking all the data!" Fei said.

"Look at them all! Do you really think we can stop that?!" Yuki yelled. "Just let the adults do their jobs if they care about their precious ARtwork!"

"But they don't know the Digimon like you do!" Fei retorted.

"Maybe you should explain it to them then! I'm not gonna watch while Patamon ends up like the others!"

The room went silent after that. Even the sound of Patamon's fluttering had stopped when he landed on the floor.

"Yuki..." Patamon muttered, but was cut short when Fei spoke up.

"Explain it to them?" she repeated. "Then I'll do that."

"Who?" Yuki looked surprised. "The adults?"

"The Waspmon! I'll explain what they're doing to them, and maybe they'll stop!"

"Are you insane?! I just said they're only drones! They're not gonna understand you!"

"Maybe not, but drones need someone to tell them what to do! I'll be that someone if I have to!" Fei declared as she handed her D-Vise to Yuki. "Please, look after Glitmon for me? They can't hurt me like they can hurt her."

"Her?" Yuki and Glitmon both asked.

"I'm sorry," Fei smiled, but without her D-Vise to see her partner, She had to imagine where she hovered. "I can't really tell what you are."

Without another word Fei left, and the door to the apartment opened and closed without a slam.

"I can be a her." Glitmon mumbled.

"This is to weird!" Daichi yelled as the group made their way to the Shinkiro building. When he looked through his D-Vise, it was like being in an under water bubble with Nohda's phone directly in the center.

"You kids are lucky I don't trust data roaming. Or at least you two are." As Nohda aimed his phone towards the ground, he could see the twin dragons that followed them. While clearly the same species, the slightly smaller one had larger wings, which stood out on its childish frame.

"I'm not gonna say, 'thank you'," the smaller one grumbled, while the other bared its tiny teeth and growled.

"I will," Tenchi said. "Thank you for helping us."

"Hey, you two look like you know what you're doing," Nohda had his hands in the air. "I'm just here to learn."

"Daichi's good at looking like knows things," Tenchi muttered.

"Darn right I am!" Daichi said, completely misinterpreting his sister's insult.

With her apartment just a few blocks from the Shinkiro building, Fei's determination carried her there in no time. From the lot filled with hastily parked cars, the din of many employees and a few police sirens overwhelmed her as she looked for a way inside. The front door was crowded by people attempting to unlock the door despite the scanners no longer recognizing their key-cards. A loud crash added to the noise when the police finally breached the entrance. Amidst all the chaos, Fei crouched by a car, having realized that she hadn't the slightest idea of what to do next. It was when she looked towards the eye logo on the side of the building and imagined the growing mass of data the Waspmon were building, that she built the courage to move forward, taking advantage of the confusion and her small size to go unnoticed.

"Would you stop that?! You're distracting me!" Back in Fei's apartment, Yuki sat cross-legged on the couch. His goggles were over his eyes as he was hunched over his orange D-Vise. A continuous bumping sound came from it as he tampered with the item, and when he held it up to look through the lens, he saw the source of the sound was Glitmon attempting to pass through a solid wall.

"And what are you doing that's so important?!" Patamon snapped.

"You wouldn't understand," Yuki solemnly replied, all the while Glitmon continued bumping against the wall.

"You know what?! You're right!" Patamon yelled. "I don't understand! Because I'm just a Digimon, right?! I don't understand things like families and sisters and words that makes one person more important to you than another!"

"Shut up!"

"What?! I'm just saying you're right!" Patamon went on. "I mean you've only known Fei a few days! Why should you waste time helping her when you're just oh so close to finding your sister! That's sarcasm, by the way! I know what that word means! Because, y'know what?! Why have we been fighting Digimon all this time?! Let's just assume that by beating each and every one we finally find the guy who took Illumina, what'll we have accomplished by just sitting here?!"

Without a word from Yuki, the screwdriver he'd been modifying his D-Vise with flew from his hand and embedded itself in the wall behind Patamon. Even though it could not touch the flying creature, the sensation of it passing between his eyes quieted him down. It was while the two partners glared at each other that the absence of the bumping sound became apparent, and in its place was an electrical hissing sound that Yuki recognized from the fight with Thunderballmon. Leaping from the couch, Yuki scanned, desperately, for Glitmon, and when he opened the window to search outside, he found the little creature with her head shoved against the D-Vise's invisible barrier.

"Glitmon! Get back here!" Yuki shouted.

"I don't want to!" Glitmon's voice grew even higher pitched as she strained against the wall. Taking action immediately, Patamon flew to Fei's partner and grabbed ahold of her tail in an attempt to save her from deletion.

"What good'll getting yourself hurt do?!" Yuki yelled.

"What good will staying here do?" Glitmon asked. Unlike Patamon, the urgency in her voice showed a clear belief in an answer for that question. Even as she attempted to get as far from the apartment as possible, Patamon's four wings quickly brought the two back.

"I said you wouldn't understand," Yuki muttered as the two Digimon made it back to the room, but as he watched the pair through Fei's purple D-Vise, he aimed towards them the screen of his orange one. "But I'll do my best to explain."

As Patamon began to fathom what was being shown to him, a grin began to reappear on his face.

"Waspmon!" Fei shouted. "Waspmon, please stop! You're hurting a lot of people! Try to understand me!"

Somehow Fei had made it to the top of the Shinkiro building, but despite getting noticed being one of her goals, she was not very happy when she accomplished it.

"Who's kid is that?!"

"Get her out of here!"

While many of the Shinkiro employees were too busy with the network problems to be bothered by Fei, getting rid of her was a feat that seemed far more attainable. Two of them had followed her to the roof, and while one stared at the Waspmon nest through his phone, the other was attempting to grab Fei.

"Come on kid!" he yelled. "Can't you see it's dangerous?!" But as he reached to grab her, she ran towards the other to grab the arm that he held his phone with.

"Waspmon! Stop stealing all the data!" Fei yelled into the phone, but stopped when a familiar eye appeared on the screen.

"Fei, did it work?" Glitmon asked through the employee's phone.

"How did you-?" Fei began.

"Congratulations, you managed to look like a complete maniac!" said a familiarly condescending voice. As Fei turned to see Yuki with a meter stick slung over his shoulder, she beamed with joy.

"Kid, do you know this girl?!" one of the employees asked.

"About as much as I want to!" Yuki replied. "But I've got permission to escort her out of here! So why don't you let the grown-ups get back to work while we do what needs to be done, Fei?!"

Not ones to waste time in a crisis, the two men quickly returned to their jobs. Yuki walked towards Fei's side of the roof to return her D-Vise, not making eye contact as he did so.

"Why are you here?" Fei asked quietly.

"Why?! I'll tell you why!" Yuki snapped. "Cause Patamon wouldn't shut up! And cause Glitmon was gonna hurt herself! And cause..." As he trailed off he removed his own D-Vise from the tip of the meter stick he had brought. "And cause I've got my pride I need to look after..."

Fei began to giggle before Patamon cut in. "So what's the plan, again?"

"We try Fei's idea," Yuki said as he used his D-Vise to watch the Waspmon swarm about. "And if that doesn't work, we do what we always do."

"Get 'em good!" Patamon grinned.

Fei nodded as she held her D-Vise, and was shocked when she saw several Waspmon already focused on them. Patamon and Glitmon floated close to their partners as Fei took a deep breathe.

"Waspmon, I don't know where you came from, but right now you mustn't know where you are. This is the ARtwork, where people keep and share the things they find precious. They've put a lot of hard work into this ARtwork because it's something a lot of people depend on. I know you just want to make a home, but please, let's find a way where no one gets hurt."

Fei sighed heavily while the Waspmon filled the silence with their buzzing.

"Do you think they got that?" Patamon asked, and immediately received a thunderous response.

"PEEEEOOOOPLE, HUUUUMANS," the entire swarm said in unison. "THINGS THAT DESTROYED OUR HOME; OUR WORLD. WASPMON WILL BUILD AGAIN AND AGAIN. HUMAN'S HOME WILL BE DESTROYED, AND WASPMON WILL LIVE."

"Does that mean, 'no'?" Glitmon asked. Luckily, the swarm had still taken no interest in the pair of Digimon as they went on draining the ARtwork.

"That means it's time to go," Yuki said as he activated his D-Vise. "Data: Release!"

"Program: Respond!"

"Patamon digivolve to-" with the group already making their way through the building, the glowing form of Patamon flew alongside them through the simulated halls, drawing the attention of many Waspmon. When a squad of them crawled towards him, Glitmon quickly flew in between.

"Astigmagic!" Glitmon declared before overloading the Waspmon's red optics. Just in time, Evengemon's development had completed and he declared his name as he cut through the stunned group.

"Three down," Evengemon said. "About a hundred more to go!"

"Let's just get outside where there's room!" Yuki said.

"But how're you gonna beat them from so far away ?" Fei asked.

"Oh, that's right!" Evengemon said happily. "You haven't seen it yet! I can't wait to show you!"

Once they were in the parking lot, Evengemon fired his thrusters to break the surface of the water, which by now was greatly diminished by the Waspmon's efforts.

"If we can get on that roof, there," Yuki pointed as he gasped for breathe. "We should have a clean shot at them." But as he said this, something new appeared over the very building he indicated.

"Upload: Active!" Daichi and Tenchi said in unison.

"Program: Respond!"

"Dracomon digivolve to-" As the two, childlike, dragons glowed, their silhouettes stayed more the same than Patamon, as their evolution resulted in more of a physical aging than a full metamorphosis. The one that spoke grew much more lithe as its wingspan gained most of the growth, while the other developed much more body mass with longer fangs and claws. To finish off the process, the winged one covered itself in blue scales while the muscled one turned a deep green. "Coredramon!"

The green dragon wasted no time as it immediately spat emerald flame into the swarm, knocking several Waspmon into the waters below. Recognizing the threat, the swarm aimed their abdomens towards the Coredramon pair, and fired a massive laser volley their way, but the two were quick to take flight before the attack made its mark. Next was the blue one's turn, as its great wings carried it into the swarm, turning the Waspmon's own attacks against each other. While mid-air, the blue Coredramon rapidly pivoted along its wings, bringing its whip-like tail down with enough force to delete a Waspmon unfortunate enough to be in the way. Meanwhile the other Coredramon gave its wings a mighty flap to boost it through the air, where it caught a Waspmon in each of its claws, and slammed them into the side of the Shinkiro building.

"Go go go, Mido!" Daichi yelled as loudly as he could. With a huge grin, he grabbed his sister by the shoulder. "This is just too cool! Hey, Tenchi, tell Aoi to hurry up before Mido finishes them all!"

"Uh, yeah," Tenchi muttered. Despite her brother's jovial attitude, she looked towards Nohda and the stern expression on his face.

"I guess it's my turn now," Nohda shrugged as he made his way towards the roof exit, but before he could put his hand on the knob, the door swung outwards, nearly knocking the glasses from his face, and onto the roof stepped Fei and Yuki, very much to Nohda's surprise.

"You again!" Yuki and Nohda both yelled.

"Look out!" Tenchi yelled suddenly, because in all the confusion, a group of Waspmon had latched onto each of the blue Coredramon's limbs. With it immobilized, another Waspmon flew in with its stinger prepared for the finishing blow. The green Coredramon roared with fury and launched itself to the aid of its twin, but there was no way it was going to make it in time. Instead, right before the Waspmon's attack struck, its entire abdomen fell from its body as Evengemon appeared behind to slice the insect in half. Catching up with the fight, the green Coredramon blanketed the cluster of Waspmon in green flame, and the blue one escaped just as its former captors burnt to a crisp.

"Nohda!" Fei yelled to be heard over the constant buzzing. "Why are you here?!"

"Why am I here?! Why are you here?!" Nohda yelled back. "What do you think you're doing getting mixed up in all this?!"

"And just what do you know about all of this?!" Yuki's question caught Nohda off guard as he looked between the four children.

"N-nothing!" Nohda insisted as he shoved his hands in his pockets. He made an attempt to leave the roof again, but Yuki wouldn't get out of his way.

"Where do you think you're going?" Yuki asked.

"Nowhere! I was just trying-" As Nohda tried hard to find an excuse, the battle was just too much of a distraction. Especially when it became clear that there was no beating the army of Waspmon with only three Digimon. "Just trying- Aw, to hell with it!" As he yelled this, Nohda finally pulled his hand from his pocket, and when he did, it was overflowing with memory cards. Nohda spun to face the edge of the roof, and at the tip of the curve, he released the hoard of chips and flung them over the side. When they finally reached the ground, something strange happened, as the tip of each card had turned a shade of gold similar to that of the Waspmon. At the same time, a good number of the swarm was struck by an unseen force and dragged downwards, where, as hard as they tried, they couldn't pass the invisible barrier to reach Evengemon and the two Coredramon.

"What the-!" said Daichi.

"Those are-!" Tenchi exclaimed.

"What are those, Nohda?!" Fei asked.

"These?" Nohda paused in the middle of another throw. "They're traps! Digimon traps!"

"What're you doing with them?!" Yuki insisted.

"Isn't it obvious?! I'm helping?!" Despite the effectiveness the cards were having in stopping Waspmon, it didn't take long for Nohda's pockets to run dry. "Though I wasn't really counting on quite so many at a time! Honestly, I wasn't really counting on any of this!"

"So now what?!" Fei asked.

"Now," Nohda said. "All we've gotta do is take out that nest! Get the ARtwork's data back where it belongs!"

"And here I was getting worried!" Evengemon said as he landed atop the same roof they shared. "I'd have been real mad if I didn't get to try that new data, Yuki!"

"What does he mean?" Fei asked.

"Well, you know the information I send Patamon so he can become Evengemon, right?" Yuki explained. "Before chasing after you, I did a little tampering with it."

"You did what?!"

With no further explanation, Yuki aimed his D-Vise towards his partner. Cycling through the new information, Yuki dragged across the screen towards Evengemon.

"Information Rewrite!" Yuki declared.

"Program: Respond!"

"Evengemon, Mode Change!" He did not glow as he said this, but the armor on his chest split down the middle, revealing a gold orb embedded in his chest. The halved armor shifted to his shoulders as the attached cord that powered his beam swords completely mummified his arms down to his wrists where the emitters for the swords then moved to the palms of his hands. At the same time, his back thrusters changed shape as well, with the wings closing together on his back while the engines themselves rotated upwards to become a pair of cannons. The conversion finished then the visor which shielded Evengemon's face lowered so that now it covered his nose down to his neck, revealing a scarred eye with neither iris nor pupil, and another eye with a targeting reticule in its center. "Evengemon Pulse Mode!"

Wasting no time at all, Evengemon's new form braced itself using what once were its wings, while it aimed the two cannons on its back at the Waspmon's creation. Pointing his arms, as well, the orb in his chest began to glow with a light that flowed to the emitters in Evengemon's palms before the barrels on his back started to glow as well.

"Gigadrive!" Evengemon declared with all his might. "Gunning!"

Four shots fired simultaneously, straight for the Waspmon nest. Any of the insects that'd been spared from the traps threw themselves between it and the blast, but the two Coredramon added green and blue flames to the attack, making it just enough to reach its mark. The Waspmon were thrown aside as the nest exploded, filling the ARtwork with shimmering lights.

**5. My Destined One Who Hates Me, Orukmon**

Nohda was never happier than during the days before the ARtwork was activated. Everyday after school, he'd run to the bridge which spanned the river, and every day after school, his best and only friend would meet him there.

"You're late!" A young boy with hair so blonde it almost looked white had his arms crossed as he blocked Nohda from the bridge.

"I was just... getting the thing like you said," Nohda mumbled as he dropped a pair of backpacks onto the ground, one of which he placed before the other boy. "Sorry, Endoh."

The boy's stern expression immediately changed when he began to laugh.

"So that's it then!?" Endoh said as he gleefully went through pack's contents. "Wish I coulda seen that jerk's face when he sees it's gone! Nice job, Nohda!"

Nohda smiled as he did whenever Endoh was happy. "So now what're you gonna do with it?" He asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Endoh replied, and without another word the boy flung the stolen backpack into the river below. "That's another blow against the forces of evil!" He declared once he heard the splash.

Nohda tightly held the railing as he watched it fall. His smile wavered slightly as he did so, and Endoh did not ignore that.

"Hey, don't look like that!" Endoh said as he slapped Nohda on the back. "We're the good guys here! Now those jerks will know not to mess with us!"

"I guess so," Nohda replied with a sheepish grin.

"That's right!" Endoh declared before unclipping a white keychain from his belt. "Now, c'mon! Let's train!"

Nohda beamed as he quickly drew out a similar toy, a purple virtual pet that in fourteen years, would become Fei's D-Vise.

In the aftermath of the Waspmon battle, several of the giant insects still crowded around the Shinkiro building, throwing themselves about as they searched for an escape from the unseen force which now contained them. As one returned to the water's surface to recover from the damage inflicted by the barrier, the Waspmon spotted a human directly beneath it. In a blind fury, the creature dived below the water towards the ground where Nohda kneeled,and once it was upon him, the Waspmon struck with its claws and stinger. The thing madly flailed about, tearing apart the simulated ground of the ARtwork, but Nohda ignored it completely as he picked up one of the memory card traps he had before thrown out. Taking note of the card's gold tip, Nohda pulled a black box from his pocket, into which he inserted the card. The infuriated Waspmon froze in its attempt to shred the boy before fading into a cloud of zeroes and ones.

Fei, who'd stood by her brother during the ordeal, watched the whole thing from her D-Vise. "What did you do to it?!" she asked, looking shocked.

"Sent it home. It's my way of repaying a debt to someone," Nohda said with a weak smile. All the while, he continued inserting traps into the black box. "Though, I guess I haven't been doing a very good job of it, huh?" As he examined the ARtwork, and all the fragmentation, graphical errors, and just plain water that filled it, he let out a deep sigh. At the same time, Glitmon floated behind Fei in a continued attempt to go unseen. "He warned me something like this could happen." Nohda went on as he looked towards the roof where Yuki, Daichi, and Tenchi still were. "But of all the people in the world, why'd it have to be you, Fei?"

Just when it looked like things were reaching a peak, Fei now had to process what her brother was saying, and face the fact that none of it made sense.

"A debt to who? Who said any of this could happen, and why did you never tell me about any of it?" Fei realized that if she wanted to ask the many questions that filled her head, she would be there all day. Right now, though, Nohda was getting to his feet, having inserted the last of his traps into the black box, which he returned to his pocket.

"I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything," Nohda said. As he kneeled by his sister and held her by her shoulders, Nohda stared deeply into Fei's eyes. "If you promise me you'll stay away from that boy and anyone else who associates themselves with Digimon."

"I knew that guy knew something!" Daichi said with a grin as he dangled his feet over the edge of the building. "Odin's Horse, that's the guy mom and dad are always talking about, right, Tenchi?! The super hacker!"

"You're not going to tell them about him, are you?" Tenchi asked quietly as she played games on her phone.

"Course not!" Daichi replied. "I mean, we'd have to tell them everything at that point, right?! About how we found some of that guy's traps, and how we met Mido and Aoi, right?!"

While he said this, he watched through his green D-Vise towards the Dracomon which he called Mido. Meanwhile, Tenchi did the same thing with her blue D-Vise towards the one called Aoi. As she did so, Patamon fluttered into view and landed right next to the skinny Dracomon.

"Hey there! It's nice to meet more Child level Digimon," Patamon said. "And y'all can evolve to Adult too? That's so cool! Glitmon sure couldn't do that when I met her."

With a happy growl, Mido wagged his tail in response, but Aoi just gave Patamon a suspicious look. It was a similar expression to the one Yuki had as he watched Fei and her brother from his spot on the roof.

"And what's your story?" Daichi asked, managing to get Yuki's attention. "I saw what you did with your Digimon back there. Pulse Mode, huh? That's some pretty cool stuff! You gotta show me how to do that with Mido! I always wanted to give Coredramon a metal arm or something!" Daichi laid down on the roof while making clawing motions with his hands. Mido cocked his head sideways as he watched him.

"And I thought Fei talked a lot," was Yuki's only response as he turned to leave.

"Hey, don't be like that" Daichi whined as, while still on his back, Yuki appeared upside down in his view.

"Where are you going?" Tenchi asked, taking a moment to look up from her game.

"I don't care," Yuki replied. "But I'm getting really sick of standing on rooftops."

At that moment, no one was watching the spot where the Waspmon had built their nest. If they had been, they would have seen something materialize from the ARtwork's core; a pair of massive, grey, hands with their fingers entwined, and when they parted slightly, two pairs of golden lights bled out from within.

Fei said nothing as she followed her brother back towards their apartment, nor did she raise her eyes from the sidewalk to even look at him. Glitmon swam along next to her and was not paying attention for the split second that something in the ARtwork above cast its shadow upon them.

"It really is my fault. By keeping such a big secret from you, I was just asking for you to do the same to me," Nohda said. He put all his strength into the weak smile that he didn't even direct towards his sister. "It's probably a good thing too that I found out when I did. We can finally start being honest with each other, before you ended up with a Digimon of your own. It's not like you could've done anything without one anyway."

As Fei was reminded of Evengemon and the two Coredramon's, she thought of tiny Glitmon and the ironic truth of her brother's words.

"Actually, I-" Fei mustered all her courage in order to correct her brother, but stopped when she nearly ran into him. Without her noticing, he had frozen in his steps to stare at his phone.

"Fei," Nohda said sternly, still paying more attention to the phone than his own sister. "Go home by yourself, I'll meet you there."

Without the strength left to reply, Fei just nodded and did as she was told. Once she was gone, Nohda turned his head up towards a rooftop. As he strained his eyes, his phone vibrated again to signify the appearance of another message. When he went to check it, he was met by the first picture of him seconds ago as he stared down the sidewalk, and the most recent picture, taken from the same angle, that portrayed Nohda squinting directly into whatever it was that was taking the shots. The first picture had come with a message which read, "face me alone, coward," and lacked anything to identify a sender. With a tight grip on his phone, Nohda ducked into the nearest alleyway he could find.

"Is that you kid? The one who was messing with my sister?" Nohda asked angrily. "Think you're being funny, huh?"

Nohda used his phone to stare into the ARtwork, and like before, his WiFi bubble gave him a clear view of a few meters before giving way to the flood, but it was just past that barrier, in the murky water itself, that he spotted the silhouette.

"A-a-Allmon!" Nohda stammered. "Is that really you?! Is this about the Digimon return?! I swear I was going to contact you as soon as I got home!"

From where he stood, Nohda could make out a vaguely humanoid shape in the figure before him. It was where he made out the head to be that a pair of golden lights appeared as the creature began to draw nearer.

Nohda's phone vibrated once more as another message appeared reading, "'Digimon return'? You really are an idiot."

Confused by its response, one thing did make sense to Nohda as what he'd identified as the creature's head broke the waters edge to show that it had no mouth.

"You're not Allmon, are you?" Nohda asked, growing more and more doubtful. His phone vibrated again when the response arrived.

"You should've just stayed out of this like before, but that's why Endoh's gone now, isn't it?"

Nohda's reaction was sudden and completely emotion driven. As he drew one of the memory traps from his pocket, he launched it towards the creature, where it passed through it to land far on the other side of the alley.

The creature didn't scream when the familiar energy field struck its face. The horrible noise that it made was deep and fleshy. It was vascular like a rapid heartbeat, as if the thing was screaming from its entire body. Then, out from the water suddenly, a pair of massive hands emerged. Each had fingers the size of Nohda himself that it then forced against the invisible wall until, to Nohda's shock, puncture marks appeared before the barrier was torn apart. As Nohda began to slowly back away, the same heartbeat sound continued, only now it was slowed. With the sound matching the rate at which the creatures shoulders shook, and from the way it's golden eyes turned upwards, Nohda knew that it was laughing.

It was then that Nohda's last fear became real when the Creature fully stepped into view. Its giant hands grew from limbs on its back, but it still had a pair of arms proportional to the rest of its body which was a pale grey. The thing wore a pair of tattered pants, giving the monster a twisted sense of humanity. While Nohda stared into the thing's golden eyes, a second pair suddenly opened on its chest, just before, with a loud, phlegmy, breath, a mouth appeared on its stomach.

Once again the monster lifted its giant hands before lunging them at Nohda with such a speed that he dropped his phone, and as it fell to the ground, the hole in its back was plain as day. No longer needing the phone, Nohda stared in horror as a set of claws appeared to float in mid air before drawing close to each other. It was then as if the entire world went silent as those massive hands tore space itself apart and the monster placed a clawed foot on the cold ground.

All at once, the heads of those Digimon in the ARtwork turned towards the same point, each of them warned by their most basic instincts to stay away. That warning was understood by all but the one Digimon born in the ARtwork.

"Fei!" Glitmon spoke up suddenly. Fei, who had one foot on the apartment stairwell as she prepared to return home, checked on her friend through her D-Vice. What she saw was the giant eye in Glitmon's forehead violently twitching.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Glitmon replied. "But I feel weird. Like when Seadramon slapped me, or when I touch the barrier."

"You're hurt?" Fei asked worriedly.

"That's it. I'm hurt," Glitmon said in her usual matter-of-fact tone. "I feel hurting in my whole body."

Before she even finished her sentence, Glitmon was off back the way they'd come, with Fei close behind. Reaching the end of the block, the girl heard a familiar voice, and panicked when it screamed. Her D-vise was ahead of her when she turned the corner, and through it she saw Nohda stumble onto the street and into the path of an oncoming truck. But before she could scream, something else stepped into the view of her D-Vise, and when it did, a series of scans let Fei know the monster's name was Orukmon and that its level was greater than anything they had seen before.

"Perfect level?" Glitmon asked, not understanding her own words, but for the first time in her life sounding shocked.

"Is that a Digimon?!" Fei gasped.

The truck, which had been blaring its horn as it drew near, was instantly stopped when Orukmon wrapped one of its massive hands around the entire cab, and the driver had just enough time to bail before the monster effortlessly crushed the vehicle. Her hands going numb, Fei's D-Vice clattered to the ground, and with her vision no longer obscured, she could see Orukmon in full view as it used its other arms to reach towards her brother.

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" All the confusion and shock of the last few days finally pushed Fei over the edge. After all of it, seeing her brother at the mercy of the monster in front of her, was enough to crush that last bit of logic, as all that was left of her mind threw her into the path of Orukmon's reach. Showing no reaction whatsoever, the creature drew back its claws before lunging at the brother and sister.

"Glitmon!" the small Digimon declared its own name as it flew against the discarded D-Vise's barrier. "Maxivolve to-" The wall shattered as Glitmon sped towards her partner, becoming a ball of light as she began to grow. Time stopped for what felt like forever as Glitmon's tiny form developed. Her tiny limbs seemed to inflate to a hundred times their length until the tips were ended by bulbous claws, while her body grew long and segmented as it contorted about like a piece of cloth on the wind. Finally, the giant eye in Glitmon's forehead grew to consume her entire face before shrinking to the right side. Every edge on the new creature who had started off so soft and rounded became sharp and pointed as it screamed in a high-pitched wail. "Poltergeistmon!"

Orukmon's attack hit, but as its nails embedded themselves deeply, its two pairs of eyes stared shocked at the thing it had struck. Fei opened her eyes, as she stood over her brother, to see the two fully realized monsters before her, but what she could not see, was the way Poltergeistmon's single, bloodshot, eye continued to violently twitch.

"Really?" A dry voice came from the mouth in Orukmon's chest. "You're gonna try and fight me? I don't know what kind of trash you've seen in this stupid ARtwork, but there's no way a perfect like me's losing to some worthless Adult level!"

Poltergeistmon's response was an ear wretching shriek before Orukmon was knocked back by an unseen force. Not even wasting time to tend the wound in its arm, Poltergeistmon threw its arms out before pouncing on its opponent. Orukmon braced itself with its giant arms, but when the attack hit, it passed right through him.

"What?!" Was what Orukmon had enough time to say. Once its guard was down, it was again struck by an invisible attack.

"Geisterfaust!" Poltergeistmon hissed, as it arched its back like a cat.

Orukmon wrapped its hands about itself just before being barraged by a massive invisible volley, all the while, Poltergeistmon was on all fours, glaring at its opponent. The final strike broke through Orukmon's defense, sending the monster hurtling into a nearby building. From there, Orukmon watched as Poltergeistmon began to flail about, swatting the air before it like a cornered animal.

"Who do you think you're messing with!" Orukmon roared as it brought a pair of massive fists down on its seemingly distracted opponent. Once again though, Poltergeistmon phased right through Orukmon, who was then struck by an invisible attack. "What is this?! Some kind of time manipulation?!"

"Not time manipulation," Nohda realized, as he pushed on his glasses. "It's just lag! Its hit box is completely out of synch with its visual model!"

"This kind of strength! It can't be!" Orukmon spread its giant fingers, and a webbing between them carried the creature into the air. "There's no way you evolved straight to Perfect level?!"

"Glitmon!" Fei yelled, but Glitmon was gone, and the wild beast in its place had its eye on only one thing.

**6. Its Wrath Awakened, Poltergeistmon**

The fight between Poltergeistmon and Orukmon went on in the middle of the street, with the latter remaining on the defensive. The pattern continued where each of Poltergeistmon's attacks would land completely apart from wherever the lanky mutant was actually located, and the four eyes of its opponent grew bloodshot as its frustration built.

"WHERE ARE YOU?!" Orukmon roared from the mouth in its chest.

"Why won't you listen to me?" Fei cried. "Glitmon!"

Nohda, held his sister's D-Vise in his hand, having retrieved it from where it fell. The shade of purple was easily recognized by the teenager as everything fell into place.

"Fei, you've got to listen to me!" Nohda spoke sternly and got his sister's tearful eyes in response. "Digimon have complex personality matrices, but like us, they're still slaves to their basic emotions! Right now, your Digimon," and Nohda choked slightly on those two words. "Is being driven by your fear!"

"My fear?" Fei repeated.

"Hey!" A familiar voice grabbed the sibling's attention, as they turned to see Daichi, Tenchi, and even Yuki running up the street to meet them. "What the heck is that!?" Daichi shouted again once they'd made it a bit closer to the battle.

"You again?!" Nohda exclaimed. "What are you doing here?!"

"Our Digimon sensed something," Tenchi said, the girl clutching her D-Vise tightly as she watched the two Perfects fight. "What are they?"

"The devil looking one just straight up attacked me," Nohda said as he pointed. "The other one's..."

"Geisterfaust!" Screamed Fei's partner, as it again pounced at its opponent, launching a mid-air volley of strikes. Just like before though, the attacks only passed through Orukmon.

"Got you!" Orukmon hissed, and as soon as its enemy's attack ended, one of its giant hands lunged towards the air where Poltergeistmon had appeared. "Krimpburz!"

Its fingers closed with something invisible between them. Orukmon squeezed with glee with one hand as, with the other, he wailed upon his unseen prey. When Poltergeistmon's image finally managed to catch up with its form, the arm which Orukmon had dug its hands into at the fight's start was the one trapped in its grasp.

"You evolved straight to Perfect to fight me?" Orukmon jeered as it stuck his mouthless head close to Poltergeistmon's. "I don't know if I should be honored, or disgusted!" Orukmon's voice rose until it was shouting the last word while it flung its opponent straight into the damaged truck.

"No!" Fei immediately ran to her partner, whose back was bent at an impossible angle across the roof of the trashed vehicle. Poltergeistmon's eye was closed as Fei approached it and reached out with her tiny hand. "Poltergeistmon?"

Fei held her hand out towards her friend, and it did not phase through when she placed it on its cheek. The creature coughed as the two partner's felt each other's touch for the very first time, and when its single eye opened, their gaze seemed to freeze time.

"There you are!" Orukmon roared. The mouth in its chest spat out black bile as energy began to build up within the monster's core. "Ghashburz!"

A swirling mass of black flames bellowed from Orukmon's mouth, hurtling towards Fei and Poltergeistmon.

"Look out!" Yuki shouted, turning Fei's attention towards the oncoming attack.

"Fei!" Poltergeistmon yelled.

"Fei?!" Orukmon repeated.

As if lifted by invisible threads, Poltergeistmon was back on its feet and standing over its partner. As the dark energy plummeted towards them, Poltergeistmon held its arms far apart.

"Seele!" Poltergeistmon declared as its eye glowed brilliantly. "Schutz!" About seven, glowing, clones of Poltergeistmon emerged from its body and held the same, defensive, pose in a long line against the attack. As the fire struck each of them in a row, the images would contort their bodies about the energy until the very last one. When the black flames had turned white from the copies surrounding it, Poltergeistmon braced its arm against the sphere and flung it back with one, loud, yell.

Orukmon cocooned itself with its hands just as the energy enveloped it, turning the monster into a small sun in the sky. Poltergeistmon collapsed by its partner, finally feeling the damage of the wound in its arm as zeroes and ones trickled from it. The light in the sky was then suddenly ripped apart, and a scarred Orukmon landed by Fei and her Digimon. From where it kneeled, the twisted humanoid made eye-contact with Fei for the first time, and the look it received from her was full of indignation.

"Girl," Orukmon hissed. "Who are you?"

"My name is Fei!" she declared as she stepped between the two perfect Digimon. "And I'm not gonna let you hurt my Digimon or my brother!"

"Fei?!" Orukmon repeated before facing the boy he'd attacked in the first place. "And your brother? It's not possible!" Without another word, Orukmon spread its webbed hands again and took off into the air.

"Hey, you-!" Poltergeistmon began, but cringed when it made the mistake of reaching out with its wounded arm.

"Don't move!" Fei insisted as she gripped the cloth-like skin of her Digimon. With her small hands tightly wrapped around its wrist, Poltergeistmon relaxed its giant form.

"Your hands are warm, Fei," Poltergeistmon said, sounding once again like little Glitmon. "And kind of wet."

"Yeah," Fei choked back a tear. "Your arms are soft."

"Ahem," Nohda stood a few meters from his sister, nervously scratching his hair. In his hand was Fei's D-Vise, which he returned to his sister. "I guess you really did like my birthday present." He mumbled.

Fei went from hugging her Digimon to hugging her brother, who awkwardly tried to avoid eye-contact with the giant creature.

"I probably should be thanking you," Nohda said hurriedly, leading Poltergeistmon to cock its head sideways.

"Why?" It asked, dumbfounding the boy.

"You're kidding, right?! You just fought off that monster, saving me and my sister!"

"I just did what Fei wanted," Poltergeistmon replied. "I couldn't've done anything if Fei didn't want it."

"Sure, why not," Nohda sighed while his sister let out a small laugh. "I suppose we should be getting home now." Nohda said as he held a thumb over his shoulder. "We're starting to get some funny looks."

By now a sizable crowd had formed around the group and smashed up truck. With the original danger gone, the immediate one suddenly became painfully obvious as the murmuring became louder and louder.

Poltergeistmon's eye blinked a few times before it lifted its undamaged arm into the air. "Hello." The crowd's response was much less than expected.

A police whistle pierced the confusion as an officer broke through the crowd and approached the odd group.

"Hey, what's the problem here?!" The officer barked. "Are you kids alright?! What the hell happened to this truck?!"

"Huh?" Was both Nohda and Fei's response as they made and broke eye-contact with Poltergeistmon, who the officer seemed to ignore.

The officer marched towards the crushed vehicle and reached out to touch the compressed metal. Meanwhile, Poltergeistmon was nice enough to move out of the way of the officer's hand.

"Why's he ignoring me?" Poltergeistmon asked.

"I don't think he can see you," Nohda concurred.

Everything changed when a yell rang out from the crowd. After an unbelievable wait, someone had finally drawn out their phone to photograph the mess, and the picture showed Poltergeistmon as clearly visible as it was to Fei and Nohda.

"There's something there! On the truck! One of those monsters!"

"Poltergeistmon, go home!" Fei hissed, and the damaged truck was crushed even further by the force Poltergeistmon exerted to launch into the air.

"Now it's our turn," Nohda muttered as he took hold of his sister's hand and pulled her from the crowd.

"Well," Nohda sat with his arms crossed by his desk full of monitors. "After everything that's happened today, it's good to see my backup hard drives were untouched."

"That's all?" Fei asked from atop Poltergeistmon's knee, the creature showed amazing flexibility to fit into the siblings apartment, even though its head was shoved against the ceiling.

"No, I just wanna back-track, okay?" Nohda insisted. "Cause I wanna be sure our stories match up. So just yesterday you met this guy," Nohda jabbed a finger towards the corner where Yuki was situated. "And found one of my traps which contained this guy." Nohda redirected his finger towards Poltergeistmon, who blinked in response. "But you didn't actually meet it-"

"Her," Fei corrected.

"Until this morning," Nohda went on, "when my old virtual pet merged with said trap to become this guy- I mean, this thing," Nohda then pointed at Fei's purple D-Vise.

"Seriously?!" Daichi blurted from his spot of the room. "You've only known your Digimon a day, and it's already evolved?!"

"Oh, right," Nohda grumbled. "You two."

"Us four," Tenchi corrected, holding up her blue D-Vise.

"So why don't you make Poltergeistmon revert then?" Yuki spoke up.

"I don't know how," Fei said. "How do you always do it to Evengemon?"

"Evengemon's an Adult level, not a Perfect."

"I think I've figured that out," Nohda interjected. Holding his hand out to his sister, the girl handed over her D-Vise. "You've fought high level Digimon before." Nohda said to the other children. "But they don't revert to Child level like yours. No doubt due to how the memory traps you've found have altered the technology they've merged with."

"No doubt," Yuki repeated sarcastically.

"You, kid," Nohda went on. "When your Digimon reverts, the excess data stores in your D-Vise, which is how you were so easily able to modify the data for that little stunt you pulled with the Waspmon. Am I right?"

"R-right," Yuki nervously confirmed.

"You still gotta show me how to do that!" Daichi cut in.

"Although," Nohda continued after taking a quick drink of water. "As was made painfully clear to me in the most recent encounter, these memory traps have almost no effect on Perfect level Digimon." As he said this Nohda yanked the memory card from his sister's D-Vise, revealing to the whole room its burnt out state. Pulling a new one from his arsenal, he replaced the first before returning the device to his sister. "Try again now, but make sure Poltergeistmon's completely relaxed."

Fei nodded before looking to her Digimon. With her soft grip on the D-Vise, Poltergeistmon gingerly wrapped its bulbous digits around Fei's hand. Though no one could see the color of the memory trap turn purple in their grasp, they were able to once the pair leg go of each other. Fei went on to mimic what she had seen Yuki do before, and the room suddenly became much more spacious.

"Glitmon?!" Fei gasped, falling to the floor as what had been her seat vanished into zeroes and ones.

"What?" said the voice that had become so familiar over the course of the day. Fei looked down at the screen of her D-Vise and was met by Glitmon's three, big, eyes.

Tearing up slightly, Fei laughed again. "It's been a long day!"

"But what about you, mister?" Yuki insisted. "None of us would've met our Digimon if you weren't going around setting traps for them in the first place!"

"Your welcome, I guess? And stop calling me 'mister'! I've been doing this for a while now with no trouble, or atleast, no trouble up to about a week ago. Which is why your message," Nohda said while looking towards Daichi and Tenchi. "Nearly gave me a heart attack!"

"We just thought you'd know something," Tenchi said. "What with your reputation and all."

"And I said there weren't any incriminating messages in my log about sending Digimon into the ARtwork," Nohda replied. "What are there, are a bunch of incriminating messages about getting Digimon out of the ARtwork."

"For crying out loud!" Yuki snapped. "Just tell us why you've been doing this already!"

"Ahem," Nohda pushed on his glasses to regain his composure. "I was asked to," he said. "By Allmon, the Digimon King."

Far away, or possibly very close to where the group was conversing, it was impossible to quantify, another meeting was in progress. The room was illuminated by only what shone through the cracks in the walls, so whenever a bolt of lightning would strike the desolate landscape outside, the two people within the room were almost visible. One sat atop a massive throne. A mask hid his face while he lazily pet a grotesque beast by his side. The other had the appearance of a woman, and her long, dark, hair draped over her face, which was aimed down at the cold floors.

"Orukmon hasn't returned yet?" the woman asked. Despite the quiet way she spoke, her voice echoed throughout the dark room.

"No," the man in the throne replied, clearly. "And after begging so hard to visit the Analog World."

"Let me go after him, please."

The man on the throne let out a youthful laugh. "I know how badly you have wanted to visit that place, but now is not the time."

"Master?"

"You do give me an idea, though. Perhaps sending a Digimon is the wrong thing to do. Perhaps we should send... something else."

**7. Birth of the Black D-Vise**

The next week felt almost normal after the last two days. The water was gone from the ARtwork, but the city's virtual duplicate was still decorated by glitches and fragmentation. Glitmon never did evolve to Poltergeistmon again, though wild Digimon would still appear now and then that Patamon and the twin Dracomon would battle in their Adult form. Equipped with Nohda's memory traps though, the team was now able to avoid the deletion of the wild Digimon.

At the same time, the company, Shinkiro, was nowhere closer to understanding what was really wrong with the ARtwork than when the first monster appeared. After needing to breach the doors during the Waspmon infestation, the building's front entrance was covered by a thick, brown, paper, until new window's could be supplied. Security was tighter than ever after that day, but that didn't stop Daichi and Tenchi from hanging around their parents' building.

"Morning, Chap!" Daichi declared. As he and his sister entered the Shinkiro building's main lobby, a bald, yet mustachioed man at the security desk smiled back at them.

"Hello, Boss," Chap replied. "You wouldn't believe what happened the other night."

"What did?" Tenchi asked.

"Did someone try to rob the place?!" Daichi grinned. "Did you have to tase em?!"

"Well, no," Chap said as he leaned back in his chair. "He was just sorta sleeping there."

A long silence occurred while the brother and sister processed what the old security guard had said.

"Wait," Daichi paused. "So someone did try and break in?!"

"No one noticed him come in, and I checked the cameras," Chap said, after bringing the pair to a locked door near the back of the building. Through a window to the side, the twins could see an old man in ragged clothes unconscious on a flat table. "It's like he appeared out of thin air."

"That sounds familiar," Aoi the Dracomon muttered. Tenchi put a hand over her pocket, so that no one would hear her invisible partner through her D-Vise.

"He's not a Digimon, is he?" Daichi asked as he looked at his sister. "I mean, I'd say for sure he wasn't, since he's in the real world, but that was before seeing Fei's Digimon fight that scary one."

"You kids and your current talk," Chap shook his head as he failed to understand Daichi's words.

"Sir?" A random employee wearing a similar uniform to Chap's picked that moment to approach the group. Ignoring the two kids, the man held a worn looking, plastic, card towards the older security guard. "I checked it, just like you said."

"Isn't that an ID card for this building?" Tenchi asked.

"So that's how he got in?" Chap thought, but the other guard shook his head.

"No, sir. The last time this card was scanned was fourteen years ago," the man paused for a moment before finishing with, "on June the sixth."

"The day the ARtwork went online?!" The tone of Chap's voice suddenly turned grave. "What name is on that card?!"

"Vahn Winters, sir..."

"Impossible. I knew that man! Even in fourteen years, he couldn't have aged that much!"

A scream from within the room drew everyone's attention back to the mysterious old man. He had awoken from his coma, and was now frantically clawing at the walls, all the while shouting at the top of his lungs.

"WHERE AM I?! LET ME GO! THE MONSTERS! DON'T LET THE MONSTERS GET ME!"

Odin's_Horse - dear King Allmon, as you recall, I accepted this task graciously, on the terms that my sister be left oblivious to its specifics. But now, not only has that failed, but she and several others seem to have formed bonds with some of your fellow Digimon. While your immediate action is not necessary, I would greatly appreciate any insight you might have on the current situation, as well as possible reasons behind why the memory traps you've provided me with have created these anomalies.

Nohda sat back from his computer, rereading the message he'd just composed. Worried somewhat that its tone could be misconstrued, he leaned in to make a few edits, but that became unnecessary when a reply appeared despite him never hitting send.

****** - Your circumstances are indeed unfortunate, my friend. While cases of Digimon and humans bonding are not impossible, the event is so infrequent to nearly be considered so. Regardless, I must insist that you return any and all Digimon that have become lost in your world to me immediately, despite any personal feelings. I'm sure you will agree with me that it is in the best interest of both species that contact be kept to an absolute minimum.

Nohda sighed deeply, nervous to compose a reply now that he realized Allmon could read it before he even sends it. Nohda was lost in thought, staring at his webcam, when a sound from his phone brought him back to reality.

"YEOW!"

Nohda frowned at his phone before noticing a memory trap on his desk had suddenly become black.

"OW! OW! OW! LET ME OUTA THIS THING!"

Grabbing his phone, Nohda checked the ARtwork within his room, and as he expected, a small Digimon was in the place of the black memory trap. It looked to be slightly bigger than Patamon, though had a much more humanoid shape. It was squat, and lacked a head, though a pair of eyes in its torso glared at Nohda through the lens of his phone. There was a zipper in its forhead, and its entire body had a pillow like consistency, which was apparent as the energy from the trap kept the thing pinned to the table.

"What is this?!" the Digimon demanded in a dry, squeaky, voice. "Let me go, right now!"

"Another Child Level, huh?" Nohda thought out loud. "I guess it makes sense the traps would restrict them more than the higher levels."

"Are you seriously ignoring me?!"

"Don't worry, I'll have you back in the Digital World in no time." As he said this, Nohda took the memory trap in one hand while holding the black box to receive it, in the other.

"Wait! What're you doing?! Don't put me in there! Please! NO!"

What happened next was nothing like the previous times Nohda had handled the memory traps. Instead, it was much more similar to when Fei had handled hers.

Yuki rang the doorbell of Fei's apartment before turning his attention to his feet. As he nervously fidgeted on the spot, the door was opened, to Yuki's annoyance, by Nohda.

"Got some Digimon for me?" Nohda asked.

"Just one," Yuki replied. The young boy held his orange D-Vise towards the older one so that he could see the pair of winged mammals hovering by him. One was Yuki's X-antibody Patamon, of course, but the other was larger, bluer, and more distinctly feline.

"Hello, I'm Tobucatmon," said the new creature politely. "Patamon says you can send me home?"

"Ah, actually," Nohda said as he pointed at Yuki's D-Vise. "Remember when you told me how Patamon's trap embedded itself in a phone, which turned it into your D-Vise?"

"Yeah?"

"Well," Nohda nervously stroked his hair as he revealed a black D-Vise from behind his back. "The same thing kinda just happened to the portal."

"Seriously?!" Patamon squealed and flew into the apartment without invitation. "So there's another Digimon around here?! Where is he?!"

"What's it matter to you?!" another voice shouted. Patamon turned mid-air to stare at Nohda's legs, by which now stood the plushy looking creature from Nohda's room.

"This is Gakimon," Nohda said. "And I think I'm stuck with him."

It didn't take long at all after that for Daichi and Tenchi to arrive as well. Yuki was the one to answer the door for them, and was not given any time before Daichi exploded.

"Guys! You're not gonna believe this! At the Shinkiro building, they found this old guy, but he's not really an old guy! He's actually like, only thirty-eight, but he looks like he's eighty! And he kept shouting about monsters and stuff it was so weird!"

Taking a step back to avoid her brother's flailing arms, Tenchi spoke up once Daichi paused for breathe.

"They found a man who we think's been to the Digital World."

"You should probably come inside," Yuki said, holding his thumb over his shoulder. "I think we're in for another lecture from the professor over there."

After joining Nohda in the living room, Tenchi made a very quick observation.

"Where are Fei and Glitmon?"

"She's busy," Nohda insisted. "This shouldn't concern her."

"What do you mean?" Daichi asked. "We're a team, right?"

"Technically, yes, I suppose," Nohda replied. "But she's also, my sister, and right now she's already way closer to this than I ever wanted her to be."

"So it's okay for us to get into trouble with Digimon, but not Fei, because she's your sister?" Yuki quickly summarized.

"Pretty much, yes!" Nohda retorted. "Now where was I?"

"You broke the portal," Yuki muttered.

"You broke the what?!" shouted Daichi and Aoi's voice from Tenchi's pocket.

"Technically, he did," Nohda said, placing his black D-Vise on the table, and drawing attention to Gakimon huddled behind the couch. Tobucatmon was there as well, and Aoi chased after Mido, who went to mingle.

"Dude, that looks so cool!" was Daichi's reaction to Nohda's D-Vise. "What does your Digimon do?! Can he evolve yet?!"

"Personally, I thought it could do with a bit of gold trim. And no, as far as I can tell, Gakimon can't evolve. He just sorta mopes around. Anyway, back to the point! That thing you were shouting about earlier, you said a human actually came back from the Digital World?"

"Yes," Tenchi said.

"Which means, he'd've have to've been there in the first place," Yuki thought outloud.

"Obviously," Tenchi said.

"Well, that settles it," Nohda declared. "I'm going to the Digital World."

The door to Fei's room was open, but Yuki knocked anyway. The girl looked up from her bed, but nervously turned away when she saw who it was.

"Yo, Glitmon!" Patamon chirped as he flew into the room. "Haven't seen you in a while!"

"Am I invisible?" asked Glitmon.

"Do you know what your brother's planning in there?!" Yuki insisted.

"I know," Fei replied. "For as mush as he wanted to keep the Digital World a secret, he really doesn't have much else to talk about."

"But, Daichi and Tenchi say they've seen a guy, a human, who's been there and back! Now your brother's all ready to go to the Digital World and just leave you here!"

"Is he letting you go?"

"Yeah, me, Daichi, and Tenchi!"

"Don't you want to go? Maybe you'll find Illumina there."

"But don't you wanna come too?!"

"I can't go."

"Yes you can! He only wants us because his Digimon can't evolve to Adult, but yours can go straight to Perfect! If any of us should be going, it's you!"

"You don't get it!" Fei yelled suddenly. "Patamon never evolved to Perfect, but when Glitmon did, I couldn't feel her anymore! I mean, yeah, she became solid, but it was like something inside me was just ripped out! I was so happy when Nohda fixed it, but I don't know what I'd do if it happened again."

Yuki looked towards Patamon who was in the rare position of having a serious expression.

"I don't remember much about the Digital World," Patamon said. "But anything above Adult Digimon was pretty rare. If Glitmon does take power from Fei to become Perfect, it'd probably be so much that the D-Vise's connection gets damaged."

"Of course I want to go to the Digital World," Fei cried. "It'll be dangerous, and I want to be there for my brother. But I don't want to lose Glitmon either."

Fei was shivering on her bed. Yuki took a few moments to muster the courage to step forward. When he did, he held his hand out to Fei, who looked at him confusedly.

"Give it to me," said Yuki.

"What?"

"Give me your D-Vise."

Fei did so and Yuki sat next to her, drawing out his own D-Vise to compare.

"Look at this," Yuki said, drawing a screwdriver from his pocket and pointing it at his D-Vise's screen. Fei watched a cascade of zeroes and ones with a furrowed brow.

"That's..." she said as she stared intently. "Is that Evengemon's code?"

"Right, and this," Yuki said as he made a quick addendum. "Is how I modified it for Evengemon Pulse Mode. I reprogrammed the cybernetic part of his matrix for long range combat at the cost of his flight and swords."

"How do you even know how to do that?"

"I don't know how I know," Yuki shook his head. "It just makes sense to me. But if I can modify Evengemon's data that way, maybe I can make Poltergeistmon's a little less overwhelming."

Unknowingly, Fei was suddenly smiling, but a sudden thought changed her expression again.

"Did you say, 'my brother's Digimon'?!"

"So I'll have the domain address I took from the portal inputted into each of our Visor's," Nohda said as he, Daichi, and Tenchi sat around a table. "I'll have set this apartment's wifi to the same network, so the Digimon can come too."

"That could work," Tenchi nodded.

"Yeah, makes perfect sense," Daichi lied.

"You'll probably need help, though," Yuki said, as he returned with Fei. Noticing the black D-Vise on the table, she drew out her purple one to scan the room, immediately spotting Tobucatmon.

"Hello, are you my brother's Digimon?" The winged feline flushed at the suggestion.

"Me?! Be with a human?!" Tobucatmon gasped. "Begging your pardon, you've all been very nice to me, but I don't think I could do that."

"Then who-?" Fei began when a cough at her feet made her lower her D-Vise to where Gakimon stood.

"Are you Fei?" it asked.

"Y-yes?" Fei replied. Gakimon said nothing else, but gave her a long stare before returning to his corner.

"Fei, what are you doing?" Nohda asked seriously.

"I've decided I want to come after all."

"Come on, I thought we talked about this!"

"But I'm okay now. Glitmon's okay now! Yuki," Fei said with a smile. "Programmed her an Adult Stage!"

Everyone who wasn't holding a D-Vise suddenly was and pointing them towards Fei. Hovering next to her was a humanoid shape. Its body was a similar size to Fei, but its limbs trailed off in large pieces of silk that covered most of its form. Its head was human like in appearance, with long, silver, hair and dark lips. The majority or its face was covered by an ovular shape with an eye in its center, very reminiscent of Glitmon's head.

"Hello, I am Geistmon," the new creature said in its slightly less squeaky than Glitmon's voice. "So what are we doing?"

**8. Digimon Talk**

"Remember when you were little, Fei? Every night, I would read to you before you fell asleep, and every night, you asked me for the same story. I wish I still had the book, but who has books anymore these days, what with everything being digital and all? I still remember the story, though. It was about an unhappy girl with no friends and cruel parents, but then one day she realized she wasn't a human being. That she had been left as a baby to be with humans, but once she realized her true heritage, she left all the mean people she ever knew behind to live happily ever after. I still remember when you stopped asking me to read you stories, and I recognized that you were at that age where you were too mature to be nurtured by your big brother."

"That's not true, Nohda..."

"How do you feel?" Tobucatmon asked. The six Digimon were together in the ARtwork of Fei and Nohda's apartment as the humans worked on their own thing. Glitmon, who had returned to Child level stared back at Tobucatmon blankly.

"A little sleepy," was Glitmon's response.

"No data leaks? Clipping errors? Memory faults?" Tobucatmon circled Glitmon as it examined her, causing the child Digimon to grow dizzy.

"No more than usual. Why do you think she's called Glitmon?" Patamon joked.

"I've heard of induced evolutions before," Tobucatmon said. "But never anything like this."

"Yuki's just got the gift, I tell you," Patamon said. "It's how I was able to evolve to Evengemon in the first place!"

"It's not healthy, is what it is," Aoi spoke up suddenly. The smaller of the two Dracomon's stepped forward, giving Glitmon and Patamon a sniff each. "When you turn into that form, with all those metal bits, you look like you're barely holding together."

"Says you. Who ever heard of a Digimon with a name?" Patamon jeered.

"Shut up," Aoi flushed. "It's just so Tenchi and Daichi can tell us apart. Isn't that right, Mido?" The larger Dracomon chirped in agreement.

"Doesn't he ever say anything?"

"He doesn't have to. We understood each other just fine when it was just the two of us." Aoi snapped before turning towards Gakimon. "What do you think? Isn't humans forcing Digimon to evolve weird?"

"You're all weirdos," Gakimon muttered.

"So you're telling me your partners had nothing to do with your evolutions?" Patamon asked.

"Our Adult forms are completely natural," Aoi smirked. "We didn't need any tampering with our matrices to evolve. In fact, once we get back to the Digital World I think we'll be alright if the two of us went off by ourselves again." Mido loudly grumbled in disagreement though, making Aoi look away, frowning.

"That's what the Digital World was like for y'all?" Patamon asked.

"Yeah, we didn't need anyone but each other," Aoi replied. "Don't tell me you haven't anything back home to return to?"

"All I remember from the Digital World was a lot of yelling," Patamon thought. "It mustn't have been all that important if it didn't even leave an impact. Besides, I'm having way too much fun with Yuki to ever leave."

"I'll admit I haven't seen a lot of dragon Digimon since the Dragon Empire fell. But then, none of you remember the distortion?" Confused looks from the other Digimon answered Tobucatmon's question.

"The what?"

"The distortion is the last curse of the Dragon Empire," Gakimon brooded. "It'll mean the end of the entire Digital World."

A long silence followed where no one quite knew what to say.

"You've gotta be kidding me!" Patamon blurted suddenly. "Where did this come from all of a sudden?!"

"And what's this about a Dragon Empire?!" Aoi shouted.

"I-I just thought," Tobucatmon stuttered. "I mean, it's not that big a deal!"

"End of the world sounds like a pretty big deal!" Patamon snapped.

"That's just crazy talk!" Tobucatmon insisted. "Some Digimon'll have you believe the world was ending, but Allmon protects us all in the Central Kingdom! The distortion's just some data storm that'll send you away if you get caught in it! I mean, just look at me! I'm proof that it's alright!"

"You're a gullible idiot!" Gakimon snapped before looking towards the partner Digimon. "And you! You're so separated from your homeland you've forgotten about the struggle it means to be a Digimon!"

"I've never been to the Digital World," Glitmon said, which preceded another long silence and exchange of dirty looks.

In that silence though, it became apparent that the humans in the room had also gone quiet. Nohda had his hand in the air, and the others watched him as he seemed focused on listening to something unseen. Finally he began to motion to the others, and spoke to Fei in a way that made the girl's eyes go wide. Fei hurriedly whispered to the rest of the group, who all gathered what they could and rushed to Nohda's room, leaving the boy alone to stare at the front door.

"What's going on?" Glitmon asked just as the door opened, and a man in business attire and a suitcase stepped into the apartment.

"That guy looks a lot like Nohda," Aoi said. "Do you think that's what his Adult level looks like?"

"Yuki and the others are kinda like Child level," Patamon said. "Wouldn't that mean Nohda's already Adult level?"

"Then that's a Perfect level?" While that odd discussion went on, Nohda was tensely standing by, as the man emptied his suitcase of clothes and replacing them with new ones. With the D-Vises now gone from the room, there was no way for the Digimon to hear the conversation clearly, but it was clear from the man's body language why Nohda had made the other's leave.

"The Perfect level looks mad," Tobucatmon said.

"Wow," Patamon said. "He's got Nohda scared stiff! Should we do something?" Patamon turned to ask Glitmon, but she was to busy staring down the hallway, where Fei could barely be seen, worriedly peeking around a corner.

"Looks like the Perfect level's leaving already," Aoi said. "What was his deal?"

No one had an answer, but having been reminded of something, Patamon faced towards Glitmon.

"Hey, what was it like when you evolved to Perfect?"

"Huh?" Glitmon replied.

"Hey, yeah!" Tobucatmon exclaimed. "You've been a Perfect level? Tell us what it was like!"

"I don't remember," Glitmon said.

"You've gotta be kidding," Aoi sighed. "We all saw you fight that other Perfect. We even tried to help, but we couldn't leave the ARtwork to join you!"

"I don't really know. It was all blurry and confusing." All three of Glitmon's eyes closed as she showed a great deal of concentration. "I remember, I wanted to protect Fei, but then something else happened. Oh, I wanted to protect, and I felt that Fei also wanted to protect. Then it all went blank until I felt Fei's hand."

"So it was your shared desire to protect something that gave you the power to evolve?" Tobucatmon gathered.

"Look at who you're asking," Aoi said, shaking her head as Glitmon stared blankly into space, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish's.

"I can't wait until I become a Perfect, too," Tobucatmon sighed. "There's not that many humanoid Digimon in the Central Kingdom, so I kinda always to become something like that."

"Heh, I bet I could just ask Yuki to program me a Perfect Level! Something with more lasers! And maybe missiles too! Oh, and even bigger rocket engines!"

"Because that's not gonna break your D-Vise's connection," said Aoi sarcastically.

"Yuki could make it work," Patamon mumbled, fidgeting after being shot down.

"What would you and Mido evolve to?" Glitmon asked.

"Bigger dragons, probably," Aoi replied. "It doesn't have to be anything special." Mido clearly disagreed as he violently shook his head back and forth. Aoi's twin fell to all fours while barking and snapping his jaws before standing upright again and flailing his claws wildly about, and then repeating the same pattern.

"What's up with him?" Patamon asked.

"He says he doesn't want to be a bigger dragon," Aoi sighed. "He wants to be the biggest dragon."

"I like the way you think, buddy!" Patamon said as he pat Mido on the head.

"And what about him?" Glitmon said, looking towards Gakimon.

"What about him?" Patamon asked.

"What do you think his Perfect form could be?"

"Ha!" Aoi scoffed. "Like that guy could ever evolve to a Perfect!" Patamon and Aoi shared a laugh together while Gakimon continued to glower in his corner.

"I think we're done."

The Digimon were so caught up in their conversation, they hadn't even noticed when their partners had returned. Now, they looked up to see the humans gathered around five visors, one of them brand new as Nohda had rushed to the store to buy another due to Yuki not already owning one.

"You think, or you know?" Tenchi asked.

"I've been wanting to test this ever since I traced that portal's domain address," Nohda explained. "And with our dad gone on another long business trip, this is the best chance I'm getting. What about you?"

"Don't worry about our parents," Daichi smirked. "They're so busy with the company, they don't even care what we do."

As Fei faced towards Yuki, the boy was clenching his teeth. Without hesitation, Yuki took one of the visors into his hands.

"Alright, so once we're all hooked in, this apartment's wifi will be tied to the same server signal that we got from the portal," Yuki summarized. "Our Digimon and our online avatars should then either appear in the Digital World, or we overload the network and all feel like idiots. Any questions?"

"Can we shout something epic before we go?!" Daichi yelled, earning some odd looks. "Come on! Something like, 'Dimension Break!'Or maybe, 'Grand Log-On!'"

"Or, 'Excelsior'?" Nohda said right before another silence.

"Let's just go."


End file.
